Normatively, democratic constitutions should express how citizens want to govern themselves collectively. Little is known, however, about how citizens’ constitutional preferences can be elicited and aggregated in practice. An intuitively appealing approach is to allow various forms of popular participation during a constitution-making process, including a popular vote to accept or reject the draft constitution (Fishkin 2011). Based on the Chilean experience with democratic constitution making, this article identifies unanticipated and previously unexplored distortions that can lead to incongruence between the preferences of voters and representatives regarding the extent and direction of constitutional change.

A distinctive feature of 21st-century constitution making is the role assigned to citizens through various forms of direct participation, as well as special efforts to include groups underrepresented and marginalized in ordinary politics. The legitimacy of these processes increasingly requires a role for actors and groups previously excluded from crucial institutional decisions (Elster 1998; Fishkin 2011; Reuchamps and Welp 2023; Rubio-Marín 2020; Welp and Soto 2020). However, vested interests have proven challenging to overcome amid a global crisis of representation. The failed Chilean process of 2021–2022 provides valuable lessons about the triumphs and pitfalls of embracing an open approach to constitution making.

Style is easy to dismiss but crucial to understand, and Goodman's explanation of why style matters politically is one of the reasons that I, as a specialist in Roman rhetoric and political thought, appreciate his book. The absence I see in Goodman's book haunts my own work too; I have only just begun seriously applying myself to the task of rethinking and redress.

Research on public health, crime, and policing regularly discusses sex workers in Southeast Asia but rarely recognises them as agents of social and political activism. This paper shows that sex workers and their allies in Singapore and the Philippines have long and rich histories of challenging their criminalisation and stigmatisation through cultural activism, political advocacy, consciousness-raising, and the provision of direct services to fellow sex workers. Using feminist ethnography, including interviews and participant observation with Project X in Singapore and the Philippine Sex Workers Collective, this paper explores how sex work activists have strategically adapted to their political environments. In Singapore, they maintain resistance through ‘shape-shifting,’ working within state-sanctioned mechanisms, positioning themselves as public health service providers, and creating spaces for radical political advocacy. In the Philippines, where an anti-sex work position is more deeply entrenched within dominant social blocs, sex work activists aggressively criticise state policies on social media and in carefully vetted forums but remain strategically invisible to avoid exposure, harassment, misrepresentation, and prosecution. This paper looks at how sex work activists engage in claims-making — underscoring the differences in the political resonance of human rights in both countries — and interrogates how sex work activism challenges social hierarchies, especially concerning migrants and trans individuals. Overall, it contributes to a richer understanding of non-traditional forms of political activism in Southeast Asia and makes visible sex workers’ contributions to feminism and labour movements in the global south and non-Western contexts.

In the sixth chapter of his Tianzhu shiyi (天主實義, “The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven”), Matteo Ricci offers a critique of the anti-intentionalistic thread that he detects in the Chinese philosophical tradition. In this brief essay, I offer an analysis of a noteworthy archery analogy that Ricci employs to describe the nature of ethical action as an intentional process with a conscious aim. I trace how Ricci skilfully combines Western and Chinese images and categories to craft this simile. Before that, I set the stage by offering some preliminary comments that contextualize Ricci's interest in the question of intentional vs. non-intentional conduct.

Expressions of social discontent that trigger deep political reform appear to be a sign of the times. Emerging political actors challenge delegitimized political elites with promises of a closer relationship with electorates, new rules to fight corruption, and more open access to the benefits of economic growth. Often, however, reforms in recent decades have weakened instead of strengthened democracy, leaving political systems less fair and more exclusive than before. The Chilean constitution-making process of 2021–2022 reasonably raised hopes for a different outcome.

This article draws on a variety of primary sources to first illustrate the rise of African abolitionism in the Fante region in the mid-nineteenth century and then situate local abolitionists in the context of colonial legal abolition in the Gold Coast. When the British abolished slavery in 1874, various Fante groups had been developing local anti-slavery views and strategies closely connected to the evolution of a Fante ethnic identity fashioned against the “barbaric” Asante. Tensions arose between the Fante intelligentsia, which spearheaded local abolitionism, and British colonial elites. The article examines the rise of local abolitionism among the coastal Fante through specific ideas, individuals, and events, and discusses subsequent dynamics in the “first age” (1874–1900) of colonial abolitionism in the Gold Coast. It shows that the 1874 abolition was opposed by members of the Fante anti-slavery movement not—as has been argued—because Fante intellectuals were pro-slavery or opposed to the idea of abolition, but because they held different visions of emancipation and were critical of British abolition laws that, unlike in the West Indies, did not compensate slaveowners.

The trilobite faunas that occur with the Steptoean Positive Isotope Carbon Excursion (SPICE) at Smithfield Canyon, Utah, have been reported, but not illustrated. Given the importance of the SPICE at this section for international correlations, the trilobites from new collections from the upper Nounan Dolomite to lower St. Charles Formation at Smithfield Canyon are reported herein and integrated with the previously reported taxa. Trilobite assemblages indicate that the upper Cedaria to the Ellipsocephaloides biozones (Miaolingian Series, Guzhangian Stage to Furongian Series, Jiangshanian Stage) are present stratigraphically below or above the SPICE.

Some of the taxa reported herein may represent new species, but they are not represented by well-enough preserved specimens and are left in open nomenclature. However, Kingstonia smithfieldensis n. sp. and Bromella utahensis n. sp. are named on the basis of common and well-preserved specimens.

New carbon isotope data from Smithfield Canyon from an overlapping section of the lower St. Charles Formation, that add to the overall shape of the SPICE curve, are presented. The new δ13C values above the Elvinia Biozone range from –0.36‰ to +1.5‰, confirming that the SPICE concludes within the Elvinia Biozone.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/ad4fd372-8da4-4caa-98ed-ea82700cca60

This paper explores American tariff politics and the embrace of protectionism within the Ohio Valley in the two decades following the War of 1812. During these years, residents of the western states navigated the emergence of steam transportation, a growing number of state-chartered banks, and intense population growth. This fueled an economic boom that went bust during the Panic of 1819. Western farmers, merchants, and manufacturers blamed harmful patterns of trade for this economic crisis, which bolstered a distinct regional identity that embraced a properly constructed restrictive tariff as a “western” measure. Consequently, the decade of the 1820s featured the most sustained period of conflict over the tariff issue in the antebellum era. This article examines western participation in conflicts over commerce and roots the political economy of trade policy in changing economic conditions that inspired distinct northern, southern, and western perspectives on trade and economic development. I conclude that both protectionist claims to economic nationalism and free trade embrace of international exchange overlook the individual assessments of local and regional markets that set the terms on which participants in the tariff debates of the early republic imagined future development.

The history of the accommodation of Najm al-Dīn Dāya's Persian work, Mirṣād al-ʿibād, in China sheds light on an array of social and intellectual forces that redrew and straddled earlier boundaries and definitions of Chinese Islam between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This essay focuses on three main effects that the introduction of Mirṣād al-ʿibād had on the historical trajectory of early modern Chinese Islamic scholarship. It begins by pointing to the ways in which the introduction of the Mirṣād contributed to the reshaping of the Chinese Islamic canon by giving Persian Ṣūfī theology a central place and the heated debate that the process entailed. It then examines the methodological dilemmas surrounding the appropriate methods with which to investigate and scrutinize this difficult text, and the variety of reading practices and methods of translation that scholars have applied to do so. Finally, the essay examines the diverse readings and interpretations that the Chinese translations of this text have generated.

Affiliation with different religions can have different effects on practitioners’ trust in state institutions and in social actors. Based on a survey of 3,740 residents in Hong Kong in 2021, we examine the relationship between religious affiliation and believers’ trust in the political authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong and in civil actors in the city. We find that affiliation with traditional Chinese religions and Eastern religions has a positive and significant effect on believers’ trust in the political authorities, whereas belief in Western religions does not have such an effect. Affiliation with Western religions, however, has a stronger positive and significant effect on interpersonal trust and on tolerance for unconventional behaviour. These findings shed light on the interaction between the government and religious groups in Hong Kong after 1997.

This article uses Mbembe's concept of necropolitics as an analytical category to examine the representations of necropower in Squid Game. In the global “organ economy,” organ sellers decide to supply, and brokers then mediate between them and buyers. In contrast, South Korean loan sharks commodify delinquent debtors' organs by forcing them to sign a body waiver as collateral. Recent South Korean dramas have thematized this distinctive systemization of the black economy. Borrowing Lowenstein's “allegorical moment” concept, this article aims to illuminate representations of fluid necropower through children's games as a hinge between reality and the imaginary that invites viewers to dialectically evaluate death problems. The contestations of money and humanity synthetically emerge as necropower constantly moves among different entities: VIPs, a frontman, players, game rules, and money. This article claims that viewers process numerous allegorical moments created by the iconography of necropower and synthetically realize necropolitics and corporeality in Squid Game. Organ extractions and trade in episode two in particular represent “morbid spectacle” and the culmination of mammonism. This article analyzes scenes of death, games, the technique of killing, and esthetics to connect historical examples of the necropolitics that Mbembe draws on and to discuss representations of the organ trade in this recent Korean drama.