In 1879, Archibald Dobbs promoted the idea of proportional representation (PR) in Irish elections as ‘the best method of ascertaining the depth and breadth of political opinion’. Dobbs was a barrister from a prominent Protestant family in Co. Antrim that claimed a rich heritage in national and local politics stretching back centuries.1 Part of his advocacy of PR was connected to an effort to stymie ‘agitators’ gaining electoral success. ‘[Charles Stewart] Parnell and the Obstructionists are the worst foes of the men who could be responsible statesmen, of the able members of the Home Rule party’, proclaimed Dobbs. He continued:I cannot take the point of view and attitude of the Home Rulers, so far as I know it, nor can I take the English point of view. But my present task is to endeavour to obtain a full and free and real representation for Ireland, believing as I do in the great fund of good stored up in the hearts of her people.2

This article traces the career trajectories, publishing strategies, and intertwining networks of Barbara Strozzi and two of her Venetian contemporaries: the Jewish salonniére and poet Sara Copia Sulam (1592?–1641) and the forced nun and polemicist Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652). All three figures were connected to the influential Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti, a libertine circle of writers, critics, and opera librettists with interests including literature and music. Each woman pursued a career as a public intellectual in an early modern world that often chafed at women’s voices, and each broadcast their ideas by publishing on prominent presses. The experience of Copia Sulam, who was prominent as the Incogniti academy was beginning to coalesce and was forced from the public eye after meeting with a vicious backlash for her intellectual activities, could in the coming decades serve as a cautionary tale to Strozzi and Tarabotti, who had long and prolific careers that were nevertheless beset by controversy. Though the trajectories of these three women varied in significant ways, their shared literary networks and their use of the presses to craft a commanding public persona illuminate the editorial environment for women in seventeenth-century Venice.

This chapter explores the revolutionary political thought of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), or Fenians, who emerged in the 1850s as a radical alternative to constitutional nationalism. Rejecting parliamentary politics, the Fenians articulated a vision of Irish independence rooted in Rousseauian concepts of popular sovereignty and the ‘general will’, declaring themselves the provisional government of an Irish Republic. The chapter analyses how Fenianism, though often dismissed as lacking coherent political theory, developed a sophisticated critique of British rule by framing Ireland’s liberation as both a political revolt and a moral revolution. Unlike O’Connell’s loyalty to the Crown, the Fenians asserted that sovereignty inherently resided in the Irish people, making British rule illegitimate. Through examination of clandestine newspaper articles, proclamations, and memoirs, the chapter reveals how Fenianism combined militant separatism with democratic ideals, challenging prevailing models of representative government under the Union.

This chapter encompasses Neruda’s poetic production during his latest years, which has been divided into two sections: late and posthumous poems published in books. Neruda’s literary fame was cemented in his previous work, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1924), Residencia en la tierra (Residence on Earth, 1933, 1935, 1947), Canto general (1950), and Odas elementales (Elemental Odes, 1954–57). In general, critics and general readers have overlooked Neruda’s late body of work, which reflected a post-millennial futurity. He announced this visionary approach in both Aún (Still Another Day, 1969) and Fin de mundo (World’s End, 1969), but the best summary of his take on futurity can be found in his posthumous 2000 (1974).

In one of the celebrations of his fiftieth birthday, Neruda stated that the poet has two duties: “to leave and to return.” He later named one of his books Navigations and Returns. His life was that of a traveler who always returned, in real life and imaginatively, to his starting point: the southern territory of his childhood. This chapter examines the reasons for the journey and return in the life and work of Neruda, as well as other themes associated with his travels, such as the antipodes. He also alludes to the use of travel as a metaphor in some of his texts.

This Chapter conceptualizes security exceptions under international trade and investment agreements. In particular, it seeks to construct the chain that links trade and security-related issues arising from the application of security measures by clarifying the concept of national security to be used for the book, revisiting the current role of international organizations in balancing free trade and national security, ie the UN and the WTO, and finally contemplating the decision to incorporate security exceptions into international economic agreements or the decision to adopt security measures through the lenses of economic contract theory, the theories of international relations, such as realism, institutionalism, and constructivism, and the concept of securitization.

China’s notion of cyber sovereignty reflects an assertive extension of state authority into the digital realm. Rooted in principles of territorial jurisdiction, national security, and technological independence, this framework is embodied in key legislation. These laws impose rigorous compliance obligations on foreign and domestic businesses, particularly those operating critical information infrastructure. While these measures reinforce China’s digital autonomy, they pose significant challenges for foreign investors navigating this intricate regulatory landscape. This chapter critically examines how China’s cyber sovereignty aligns with its international investment obligations, focusing on three core principles: protection against expropriation, national treatment, and fair and equitable treatment (FET). It explores whether the stringent requirements and lack of effective remedies breach these standards, highlighting potential areas of discord with China’s investment treaties. Furthermore, it evaluates the limitations of security and general exception clauses in justifying these regulatory measures under international law. The findings suggest that China’s cyber sovereignty framework, while advancing its domestic security and technological goals, may conflict with its international investment commitments. As more nations adopt similar regulatory stances, this trend could signal a shift toward a fragmented global ICT market, reshaping the dynamics of international economic governance.

Drawing from both the medieval Scholastic philosophical-theological tradition and Aristotelian virtue ethics, Thomas Aquinas offers a comprehensive and nuanced account of the virtuous life – one that suggests fruitful relationships not only with contemporary philosophical and theological discussions but also with recent empirical work. In this short chapter, I sketch the big picture using an Aristotelian, four-causes approach. Section 1 mainly addresses the final cause or telos of virtue: ultimately, perfect happiness in eternal life – although a good earthly life affords “a certain participation” in happiness. Section 2 considers virtue’s quasi-material causes: reason and the appetites, including the intellectual appetite or will. Section 3 focuses on the formal causes (modes) of virtue in general and of the cardinal and theological virtues in particular, as well as the relationships between various virtues in the larger structure of Thomistic virtue ethics – including the possibility of a unity of the virtues. And Section 4 discusses proposed efficient causes of such virtues, drawing on the various ways in which virtues are developed and related to each other in the Thomistic picture. Throughout, I consider connections between Aquinas’s account of the virtuous life and contemporary work in ethics, psychology, and education.

This chapter uses text from throughout Aquinas’s corpus to reconstruct the main elements of his views on causation. Causation for Aquinas is a type of ontological dependence. Following Aristotle, Aquinas recognizes four species of causes. The chapter focuses in particular on efficient causation since this is the type of cause that most closely corresponds to what contemporary philosophers mean by a “cause.” Aquinas thinks that efficient causes act through active casual powers to bring about their effects. To highlight the philosophical significance of Aquinas’s views, the chapter compares Aquinas’s views on efficient causation with two prominent contemporary theories of causation, Humeanism and Nomicism.

This Chapter outlines the national legal frameworks for applying security measures by the US, the EU, and BRICS in order to understand the level of securitization of their policy objectives. It focuses on the measures that are or can be applied by the US, the EU, and BRICS in pursuit of their national (regional) security interests and, thus, potentially subjected to security exceptions under international law. Specifically, this Chapter discusses the practice of application of economic sanctions and investment screening mechanisms in those jurisdictions.

In Chapter 3 knowledge from sociocultural psychology is integrated with other disciplines within psychology such as cognitive, social, and neuro psychology, and outside psychology such as sociology, visual studies, and philosophy, to tackle the power of images to influence our seeing, thinking, feeling, and remembering.

The seven surviving printed collections of Strozzi’s vocal music (out of eight) have been well enough studied for their musical contents, but less so as bibliographical objects in the context of production methods that were increasingly ill-suited to the repertory in terms of format and typography. When viewed in this light, some of them are very odd indeed. Extreme examples are her opp. 5 (1655) and 8 (1664), which must have undergone some significant intervention during the printing process itself, chiefly – I suggest – because in each case, Strozzi identified a dedicatee in midstream, and changed her plans accordingly. My broader point is that any music print demands close examination in terms both of how it was put together, and of what it might reveal about the (now lost) manuscript sources on which it was based. But in Strozzi’s case, this also raises questions about her intentions in printing her music in the first place.

This chapter will highlight the crucial role of the Nicaragua Canal route in the ambitions of American filibusters Henry Kinney and William Walker, as well as the route’s centrality to the clash between Central American republics and the filibusters in the region’s guerra nacional. Ultimately, the short but frenetic period of filibustering in Nicaragua had several enduring consequences both for the fate of the canal route and the “Mosquito question.” While the war disrupted transit activities and undermined dreams of building a canal through Nicaragua, it also paradoxically speeded up the process of settlement of the Mosquito question as metropolitan governments realized that the longer the status of the Mosquito region remained unresolved, the more prone it would be to filibustering enterprises.