This essay deals with the influence of Adam Smith—at the end of the eighteenth century and during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars—on the constitutional projects and public debates through which reformers of southern Europe tried to import and translate British society. I focus on the intellectual filters that affected the reception of Smithian thought, particularly the political and ideological aim to realize a Whig social order, that induced the Mediterranean elite to link the Wealth of Nations with the thought of Edmund Burke and Arthur Young. The result is a moderate and conservative profile of Smithian liberalism that was is in tune with the ideological trend of the nineteenth century.

This research examines migration in Linares during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, focusing on migration chains. The city experienced a significant increase in population due to the mining boom, which led to an almost sixfold increase in the population over a period of 30 years. Using data from the 1873 population register, which includes more than 22,500 individuals, this study confirms the effectiveness of the migration chain framework in analyzing internal migration during the preindustrial and early industrialization periods. This approach has revealed the significant influence of this form of social capital in determining migratory flows to Linares, highlighting the importance of places of origin in the spatial distribution of the city and in the occupational specialization of the migrant population. The findings suggest that migratory chains played a key role in providing information about opportunities at the destination, as well as in reducing the costs associated with the search for employment and housing.

Why does ideological competition between states intensify despite opportunities for coexistence? This article develops a theory of the ideological security dilemma to explain this puzzle. Like the military security dilemma, states may take defensive measures to safeguard the legitimacy of their own ideology, but these actions can be interpreted by others as ideological offensives aimed at weakening the legitimacy of rival ideologies. I test the theory through a process tracing of US–China ideological competition from 1991 to 2024. I find that although the United States initially hoped China would democratize voluntarily, democratizing China was not a central policy goal. Conversely, while China seeks global respect for its “China model,” actively exporting authoritarian ideology is not its goal either. Nevertheless, China perceives US efforts as aimed at regime change, prompting Beijing to promote the “China model” more assertively as a countermeasure to what it sees as a US ideological assault. This intensifies US fears of the global spread of authoritarianism and triggers further counteractions. This study integrates constructivist and realist approaches while drawing on insights from comparative politics on regime legitimacy and democratization.

The Neolithic of the northeastern Iranian Plateau is defined basically by the materials recovered from the twin mounds of Sang-e Chakhmaq, the West Mound and the East Mound. The radiocarbon dates from these mounds span almost two thousand years, from around 7000 BCE to the last centuries of the sixth millennium BCE, with a chronological hiatus between ca. 6700–6200 BCE. Recent excavations at a proto-ceramic Neolithic site, Rouyan, in the vicinity of Sang-e Chakhmaq, provided occupational evidence, augmented by a series of Radiocarbon dates, which fill in the long-standing temporal hiatus of the Neolithic of the region. Both 14C dates and archaeological evidence from this excavation suggests that Rouyan was founded simultaneously with the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq, but its occupation continued without discontinuity into the fifth millennium BCE. The excavation also yielded a small ceramic assemblage from the earliest deposits of the site, indicating the site’s first settlers were familiar with this technology as early as ca. 7000 BCE.

Clinical research for Alzheimer’s disease is essential, yet ethically complex, as cognitive impairment often hinders the informed consent process for the required human subjects. Research advance directives (RADs), which allow individuals to document future research wishes while capacitated, are often proposed to protect precedent autonomy. Some scholars have championed RADs, but we contend that upholding patient autonomy relies on a "tripod" of interrelated components. First, capacity assessment is essential to determine when a research advance directive takes effect or if a patient retains the ability to rescind it. Second, surrogate decision-making remains indispensable. Surrogates must navigate the difficult substituted judgment standard for complex trials and are crucial for interpreting a patient’s best interests or resolving conflicts when an incapacitated patient’s current preferences diverge from their past directive. Third, the research advance directive itself serves as vital evidence of the patient’s values. We conclude that research advance directives must function alongside robust capacity assessment and active surrogate involvement to balance patient legacy interests with their current well-being, facilitating ethical research.

This essay considers whether eschatological speculation is appropriate in light of the mystery of human suffering. I argue that a pneumatological construal of the beatific vision offers important resources for this question. In the beatific vision, the Spirit perfects the human person by bringing them to participatory attention to the whole of their life, so that the person participates in the final event of making meaning out of the life lived. There is no general, all-encompassing description of how this heals a history of suffering, because the redemption happens in the attention shared between each particular individual and God.

By specifying the currency on which returns were to be repaid, respondentia was a ubiquitous financial instrument to carry international trade. Where multiple currencies existed and silver specie was the preferred money, imported silver performed as foreign currency. Thus, the import of foreign coins created issues for prices, profits, and exchange rates. Eighteenth-century Europeans alternatively used respondentia or bills depending on the monetary context, casting a shade of doubt on the inherent efficiency of a cashless means of payment. Until the 1820s, private bills of exchange did not circulate where cash had a premium. Europeans developed means to regulate the price of foreign coins and exchange rates. Elsewhere, respondentia allowed for hedging against exchange risk and propitiated arbitrage profits, giving an advantage over bills. The article documents the global scope of the instrument; it explains the exchange nature of the contract and explores the issues that the respondentia came to solve. It highlights the role of monies of account Europeans used in pricing foreign currencies in international trade.

This article examines the historical evolution of gender concepts in modern Afghanistan, tracing its development from nation-state building in the late nineteenth century through the revolutionary influences of Socialist and Islamist movements, and into the transformations prompted by the U.S. invasion in 2001. While situating the topic within its broader historical framework, the analysis centers on two archetypal figures of iconoclastic women in twentieth-century Afghanistan: those affiliated with communist parties under the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) and those associated with Islamist mujahidin groups. Drawing upon the traditional Afghan archetype of the heroic-poet woman, the discussion explores how warfare—both in theory and practice—reconfigured gender identities via a recurring cycle of uneven advancement and regressions. These shifts were driven largely by elite, top-down strategies that positioned urban women as symbolic agents enlisted to fight entrenched gender norms, rather than to transform them through meaningful reform. The article further addresses the roles of migration and regional ideologies in this process, underscoring how such dynamics often disregarded the lived experiences and needs of ordinary Afghan women. This oversight contributed to the rise of novel iterations of the poet-heroine archetype, which paradoxically sought to dismantle conventional notions of femininity. Ultimately, the article advocates for a viable feminist approach in Afghanistan grounded in local histories, geographies, and social realities—moving beyond rigid binary frameworks to achieve genuine relevance and effectiveness.

Debates on gender, war, and revolution in the Middle East are not new. The question of gender in the region has moved the imaginaries of academics, administrators, policymakers, journalists and activists throughout the decades, if not centuries. There is a similarly vast amount of literature on war and revolution in a region that has often been seen, and continues to be seen, through a lens shaped by a disproportional focus on conflict and violence. Many have brought the two perspectives together, discussing the nexus of gender, war, and revolution in the Middle East. This article is the introduction to a roundtable, which consists of three articles on gender, revolution, and war in Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria and contributes to this long-standing tradition of debates on the topic, offering unique perspectives on an oft-discussed area. Together, the three articles that make up this roundtable stand out for the broad range of their methodological approaches, their challenging of dominant approaches and simplifying binaries, and their efforts to highlight and counter the sidelining of marginalized perspectives.

In this article, we present the first results from radiocarbon dating of the Kirakle-Tobe settlement located in the central part of the Volga River Delta, southern Russia. Archaeological artifacts and 14C measurements on charcoal indicate three stages of settlement development on the Kirakle-Tobe knoll. The oldest 14C age corresponds to the Late Sarmatian period—early 4th century CE. The abundance of archaeological artifacts associated with the 6th–8th centuries CE indicates a long period of occupation. The youngest 14C age presumably corresponds to the Khazarian period (9th century CE). These results suggest dynamic human activity in the central part of the Volga River Delta during the Great Migration Period. These initial results can be used to verify the impact of fluctuations in the Caspian Sea level on the Volga River Delta during the Great Migration Period.