Music theatre was central in Spanish musical activity between 1850 and 1950. A thriving cultural industry developed in Spain and Latin America, with numerous companies, performers, and publishers, involving composers from different generations, such as Barbieri, Gaztambide, Chueca, Bretón, Chapí, Sorozábal, and Torroba, among many others. In this context, this chapter explores how the label zarzuela encompasses a wide variety of formats: zarzuela grande (similar to French opéra comique), zarzuela bufa, popular music theatre (within the so-called teatro por horas), revista, and lyrical comedy. In all of them, music plays a key role, offering great stylistic variety that blends national and international styles. Spanish music theatre accommodates all nuances of musical dramaturgy, ranging from popular music theatre to more elaborate examples –formally and dramatically speaking – akin to opera, making zarzuela a viable alternative to national opera.

This chapter studies linear ternary codes generated by strongly regular signed graphs, connections between signed graphs and line systems in Euclidean space with fixed angles, and links between the spectrum of signed graphs and the skew spectrum of associated oriented graphs. We provide general characterizations and concrete constructions of efficient ternary codes, showing that those derived from adjacency matrices of strongly regular signed graphs are often optimal or satisfy conditions guaranteeing high performance, with the ternary Golay code as a notable example. The chapter also gives an upper bound on the size of line systems with specified angular properties, achieved exactly when the system corresponds to a signed graph with two eigenvalues. A central contribution of the part concerning oriented graphs is a fundamental spectral correspondence between signed graphs and associated oriented graphs, which enables the latter to be studied through the spectral theory of the former and is illustrated through several examples.

This excerpt is from a testimony recalled by an eyewitness, who claimed to have seen four Naxalites being killed in an ‘encounter’ by the police in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It appears in the interim report of the Civil Rights Committee (an unofficial, voluntary committee set up to investigate several ‘encounter’ killings of Naxalite prisoners) released in 1977. The committee was comprised of prominent civil society figures, lawyers, activists and journalists. The report claimed that the police ‘encounters’ they investigated were, in fact, extra-judicial killings. This claim anticipated what is today widely recognised in the public sphere, namely, that ‘encounters’ by the police or armed forces are often staged. The report was submitted to the prime minister of India and released to the press. The opposition raised questions in parliament regarding the claims of the report and a judicial commission of inquiry under Justice V. Bhargava was set up by the Andhra Pradesh government to conduct public hearings on the alleged encounters of Naxalites during and after the Emergency.

The report was a result of a fact-finding investigation. Fact-finding investigations are the predominant mode of activism for civil liberties groups in India. In a typical fact-finding investigation, an inquiry team is established on a one-off basis. The team visits the scene or site of the case, ascertains facts, identifies those who are culpable and makes demands or recommendations.

We begin this chapter with a general principle. Originally, it was used in the framework of some specific spaces of analytic functions, often Hilbertian, mainly the Hardy space H2 or the Bergman space B2, but we shall apply it in many spaces, so it is worth stating as a general criterion.

The Television Without Frontiers Directive, introduced in 1989, was the EU’s first regulatory instrument under the audiovisual media policy, aiming to facilitate the circulation of television services throughout the Union. Since then, the audiovisual landscape has evolved significantly, with technological advancements and market shifts prompting revisions of the directive. In 2007, the scope of the directive was expanded to include video-on-demand services (e.g. Netflix), transforming the directive into the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). In the years that followed years, influencers – creators of user-generated content on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok – became established sources of audiovisual entertainment, information, education, and commercial communication. Today, they are in effective competition with traditional television and video-on-demand platforms. The most recent revision of the AVMSD in 2018 acknowledged this by no longer automatically excluding user-generated videos from the directive‘s scope. Despite this update, the regulatory framework remains deeply rooted in the twentieth-century media ecosystem, which was characterised by spectrum scarcity and television broadcasters as gatekeepers. This leads to challenges in applying and interpreting the AVMSD, hindering its ability to effectively achieve its policy goals.

The technique of star complements, together with the associated concept of star sets, is extended to the context of signed graphs. As in the case of ordinary graphs, a star complement is defined as a largest possible induced subgraph that does not contain a fixed eigenvalue of a given signed graph. This method provides an effective means of constructing larger graphs from smaller subgraphs, making it a valuable tool for the classification, construction and analysis of signed graphs with prescribed spectral properties. The chapter presents specific constructions of signed graphs with a fixed star complement, explores the maximal multiplicity of a given eigenvalue and examines star complementary decompositions of signed graphs.

This chapter traces the demobilisation process of the German People’s Union (Deutsche Volksunion, DVU) Congress campaign. The party mobilised this campaign at the Hall of the Nibelungs (Nibelungenhalle) in Passau as a means of supporting its electoral prospects as well as propagating revisionist historical narratives championed by the party leader. This case represents the largest grouping of negative demobilisation uncovered by the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), ‘civil counter-mobilisation’. Tracing the case helps identify a minimally sufficient causal explanation. The campaign faced private channelling that combined with internal factors to reduce participation in the campaign, as well as the removal of its preferred demonstration venue when local authorities approved the demolition of the Hall of the Nibelungs.

This chapter considers a range of Latin documentation and poetry composed in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, with a particular focus on the social settings in which the material was produced, consumed and performed. The chapter opens with an overview of the contemporary charter corpus, which is a rich mix of Latin and Old English documents drawn up in the names of royal, non-royal, ecclesiastic and lay individuals. This survey provides several points of comparison with the material examined in Chapters 2 and 3, and it allows us to consider the possible impact of Alfredian education reform. Consideration is given to the linguistic dynamics of the corpus and to examples that employ Latin specifically to enhance the performative potential of the document. Two sets of Latin poetry are then introduced – acrostic verses in praise of King Alfred and the ‘Metrical Calendar of Hampson’ – both of which were most probably composed within, and for, the milieu of the West Saxon court. The authorship, transmission and possible sources of inspiration for this poetry are considered. It is then argued, through a comparative discussion, that the performances of this Latin documentary and poetic material were critical to their value.

The chapter explores the impact of the use of AI in civil dispute resolution on the public/private divide. It argues that the introduction of digital technologies, and particularly AI, complicates traditional boundaries between public and private institutions, reshaping both values and institutional dynamics. The chapter unveils a dual trend: on the one hand, private-sector involvement in public courts can result in a creeping privatisation, impacting the allocation of technical expertise, the power to shape procedural law, and the ability to affect fundamental rights. On the other hand, technology can also drive a publicisation of private dispute mechanisms, with private actors adopting public-oriented goals. The chapter identifies three AI-driven disruptions of the public/private balance: (a) the extraction of value from publicly generated legal data by private AI developers; (b) the potential of AI to constrain judicial discretion and independence by reinforcing precedent-based reasoning; and (c) the lack of context sensitivity in AI systems, which necessitates a broader understanding of human–machine interactions. Therefore, the chapter argues for a careful delimitation of AI’s role in civil dispute resolution, so as to protect fundamental rights and values, as well as ensuring that human judgement remains central.

The Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) serves as a cornerstone of the EU’s efforts to align audiovisual media policies across Member States and candidate countries. Central to the Europeanisation process, the AVMSD aims to safeguard media freedom, pluralism, and cultural diversity while addressing emerging challenges in the digital landscape. However, the transfer of EU media policy has faced significant hurdles, particularly in candidate countries such as Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia. These challenges include weak institutional capacity, limited independence of national regulatory authorities (NRAs), and the misalignment of EU policies with local contexts. The 2018 AVMSD revision introduced rules extending regulatory frameworks to video-sharing platforms and reinforced NRA independence. Yet enforcement remains inconsistent within the EU, complicating its transfer to countries grappling with systemic political and economic pressures. Furthermore, geopolitical tensions, disinformation, and internal governance failures amplify the risks of exporting untested or problematic EU practices. This chapter critically examines the EU’s media policy transfer mechanisms, highlighting their inadequacies in fostering resilient governance structures. It underscores the need for reciprocal feedback during the accession process, advocating for reforms that integrate diverse cultural and political contexts. These insights contribute to rethinking Europeanisation to strengthen media governance and democratic values.