Studies of petitioning activity in the early years of the Long Parliament (1640–2) have often focused on the large-scale petitions which engaged with issues of high politics and religion in the charged atmosphere prior to the outbreak of Civil War. However, many subjects were drawn to petition the Commons and the Lords for relief in much more particular economic disputes. Utilizing overlooked manuscript petitions in the parliamentary archives and papers of the MP Bulstrode Whitelocke, this article re-examines petitioning activity between 1640 and 1642. It finds that, despite the absence of parliament during the Personal Rule, subjects eagerly embraced the calling of a new parliament, their perceptions of it shaped by its contemporary history. As MPs and peers increasingly utilized and preserved records, petitioners too evoked and confronted the parliamentary past. While some like the Merchant Adventurers’ Company glossed its presentation tactically, others including London-based glassmakers and merchants were driven by ideological beliefs in the historic role of parliament as a protector against arbitrary fiscal policies. This article contributes to post-revisionism by showing that subjects viewed parliament not as an event, but as an institution, fostering connections between past and present sessions as they petitioned for redress.

This paper explores the role of identity in constitutional law, moving beyond the dominant concept of constitutional identity. While many European constitutional texts reference various forms of identity – such as national, religious, or cultural – constitutional identity has been disproportionately emphasised in academic discourse. Through an empirical analysis of constitutional provisions and court rulings across 47 European states, this study demonstrates that identity plays a broader and more nuanced role in constitutional law than previously recognised. The paper categorises four types of relationships between identity and constitutional norms: identity as a right to protection, a basis for additional rights, a principle guiding constitutional interpretation, and an identity of the constitution itself. It highlights how constitutional courts interpret and balance competing identities, influencing the application of fundamental rights and constitutional principles. By highlighting examples that represent different models of identity systems, the paper reveals the necessity of giving scientific attention to the relationships between identities. Indeed, identities can undermine liberal constitutional values by privileging certain collective identities over individual identities and individual rights. Ultimately, the study argues that focusing solely on constitutional identity as an analytical concept to designate everything even remotely related to identity in constitutional law obscures the broader dynamics of identity within constitutional systems. It calls for a strict conceptual redefinition of constitutional identity in order to better understand how identity, in all its potential forms, continuously reshapes constitutional law and influences the evolution of democratic and human rights protections in European states.

The erection of the Berlin Wall in November 1961 gave the separation between the West and the Eastern Bloc, and particularly between the two Germanies, an enduring symbol. It also concretized the division of the Berlin Phonogram Archive, which had been separated by the Second World War, in a seemingly unsurmountable way. But while the wall made cross-border academic collaborations considerably more difficult, it did not prevent them entirely. This article relies on previously unexplored primary sources to relate and contextualize the extraordinary story of how two ethnomusicologists were able to bring together a large part of the cylinder collections of the Berlin Phonogram Archive, even as the geopolitical situation surrounding them grew ever more tense. From 1966 to 1967, Kurt Reinhard, then head of the Berlin Phonogram Archive and the Ethnomusicology Department of the Ethnological Museum in West Berlin, and Erich Stockmann, an academic employee of the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin and caretaker of the archival recordings returned by the Soviets, succeeded in exchanging and copying over 5,000 cylinder recordings and their documentation despite a litany of political and financial difficulties. Their collaboration illuminates a little-known aspect of the history of this foundational archive, while raising important questions about ethnomusicology’s political history and the roles the Cold War and Second World War played in the discipline’s formation.

This article examines the siege of Gaza as a paradigmatic case of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, revealing how Gaza operates as a “laboratory of violence” where advanced military occupation, border control, and surveillance techniques are tested and exported. By tracing the intensifying militarization and orchestrated deprivation imposed on its population, this study demonstrates how colonial biopolitics embodied in strict movement restrictions, engineered food scarcity, and segregated medical care undermine human rights and perpetuate chronic vulnerability. These necropolitical practices obstruct key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), exposing moral and political contradictions within international frameworks committed to “leaving no one behind.” Yet the SDG rubric itself arose within a development discourse entangled with colonial power, making any assessment of Gaza’s “progress” by these indicators ethically and epistemically fraught. Gaza’s predicament exemplifies the destructive potential of protracted conflict and structural violence in derailing global development targets. This article reframes Gaza’s siege as both a localized humanitarian crisis and a global precedent with serious implications for international policy and human rights law. By situating Gaza as a focal point for understanding necropolitical governance, this study seeks to portray the urgency of policy interventions that move beyond rhetoric and have demonstrably challenged and mitigated such regimes in comparable contexts.

This paper examines the life trajectories, social contexts and living conditions of women of uncertain status in post-slavery, colonial-era Tabora, with a focus on those involved in the production and consumption of beer. It thereby searches insights into the aftermath of slavery in this region, particularly for women. It reflects on the persistent social unease surrounding slavery and its aftermath, and on the way it shapes and limits sources, arguing that a focus on post-slavery is nevertheless productive. Set in context, brewers’ life stories provide a vivid illustration of a competitive urban environment, the chances for self-emancipation that it offered, and the concomitant challenges and dangers. They thereby also enable fresh insight into the social history of alcohol and of urban women in colonial Africa. We find evidence of more successful brewing careers than existing studies would predict, but also of very stark vulnerability and persistent quests for safety in family networks. This spread of outcomes highlights the contingent nature of emancipation and the endlessly varied ways in which social constraints and personal motivations combined in individual lives.

J.L. Schellenberg’s argument from divine hiddenness partly rests on the claim that non-resistant non-belief exists. In this paper, I take up the question of whether such non-belief is pervasive and argue that it is, in fact, relatively common. To support this claim, I present a novel argument grounded in a distinction between acquisition responsibility and maintenance responsibility. I argue that, for a non-believer to count as resistant in Schellenberg’s sense, they must be acquisition-responsible for their non-belief in God. I further contend that many non-believers lack such responsibility and therefore qualify as non-resistant. This argument has the added benefit of showing that many prominent objections to the existence of non-resistant non-belief are irrelevant or incomplete. Finally, I highlight the broader significance of this conclusion, both for Schellenberg’s argument and in light of recent shifts in the literature towards more evidential approaches.

By a celebrated result of Kučera and Slaman [5], the Martin-Löf random left-c.e. reals form the highest left-c.e. Solovay degree. Barmpalias and Lewis-Pye [1] strengthened this result by showing that, for all left-c.e. reals $\alpha $ and $\beta $ such that $\beta $ is Martin-Löf random and all left-c.e. approximations $a_0,a_1,\dots $ and $b_0,b_1,\dots $ of $\alpha $ and $\beta $, respectively, the limit

$$ \begin{align*} \lim\limits_{n\to\infty}\frac{\alpha - a_n}{\beta - b_n} \end{align*} $$

$\alpha $

$\beta $

Here we give an equivalent formulation of the result of Barmpalias and Lewis-Pye in terms of nondecreasing translation functions and generalize their result to the set of all (i.e., not necessarily left-c.e.) reals.

The potential withdrawal of the United States from European security commitments has raised questions about the future of nuclear deterrence on the continent. This article explores the feasibility of France assuming the role currently played by the United States in the ‘dual-key’ nuclear sharing arrangements with European NATO members. The analysis is divided into five main sections. The article begins by outlining the strategic context in which this analysis takes place, focusing on the potential withdrawal of the United States from European security commitments and the growing emphasis on the European Union’s strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, the article first examines France’s technical capabilities to lead a dual-key system in Europe, addressing aspects such as the number of nuclear warheads, delivery vectors, and operational compatibility with European allies. Next, it analyses the political and doctrinal implications of a French-led dual-key system, identifying which aspects of French nuclear doctrine might require revision or could create friction. The article also explores potential forums for nuclear dialogue and coordination, as well as the challenges of harmonising France’s national doctrine with a hypothetical extended framework for dual-key countries. In the third section, the article evaluates the political and security utility of a French-based dual-key system. Finally, it assesses the strategic, operational, and doctrinal implications of shifting from a US nuclear provider to a French one, highlighting both potential benefits and challenges. The findings suggest that, while a French-led dual-key system is technically feasible, significant political obstacles must be overcome for successful implementation.

Historians of the Cold War and the nuclear age have largely overlooked the existence of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), while films, comics, novels, and television programmes that tackled the challenging imaginary, yet all-too-possible, wastes of a post-nuclear landscape have been abundantly analysed. As cultural products and tools through which to imagine other worlds, TTRPGs offer powerful insights into how, where, and why certain groups thought about the spectre of the nuclear age and how they dealt with this threat by gaming within make-believe postapocalyptic worlds. This article draws together several threads in its analysis of the American-designed and -produced Twilight: 2000 TTRPG’s historical significance. Through analysing Twilight: 2000 as a case study of how a TTRPG functions as a specific nuclear-cultural object in its own right, the article also locates this game as a part of a wider-reaching dystopian fantasy rooted in the massive everyday reality of atomic annihilation. Likewise, the game, its mechanics, setting, and artwork are analysed here as part of a distinctive Cold War culture that permitted participants to derive pleasure and affirmation from fictional “adventures” in the postapocalyptic environment.

There is a rich history of using the arts in psychiatric care, e.g. in various forms of arts therapies. A more recent development is the collaboration of the arts in psychiatric research. The arts and psychiatric research have several fundamental differences which can lead to fruitful inspiration and innovative approaches in research. The benefits include a wider engagement of individuals and non-academic groups in research, creativity in designing research approaches, a reach to societal groups that academic research usually cannot access, and the provision of real life meaning to research evidence. Two examples of such collaborations illustrate the potentials.

Voters are increasingly turning away from governing parties in parliamentary elections, with junior parties in coalition governments often bearing the brunt of the electorate’s dissatisfaction. Can the design of legislative institutions help parties mitigate the electoral costs of governing? We suggest that in systems with strong legislative committees, junior coalition parties are better positioned to protect their party’s policy brand from being eroded, which in turn helps insulate them from the electoral costs of governing. Analyzing data on legislative committees and party-level electoral outcomes in 36 European and OECD countries from 1990 to 2019, we find that stronger parliamentary committee systems are associated with harsher electoral costs for the prime minister’s party but reduced electoral costs for junior coalition parties. Our findings suggest that the structure of legislative institutions in parliamentary systems can have significant electoral implications, including relatively positive outcomes for smaller governing parties.

This article analyses how forms of private cooperation between East and West were reshaped during the late Cold War and beyond. It does so by studying an elitist East–West club, called the International Vienna Council, which brings together leaders of multinational companies and leaders of the planned economy. While the permeability of the iron curtain has been well documented, little is known about the evolution of East–West circulation patterns during that time or the role played by economic elites. The International Vienna Council, initially a forum for ‘parallel diplomacy’, gradually became a platform for concrete business cooperation. The club’s activities continued after 1989, but it struggled with the transition from an East–West club to an interest group within the European Union. These dynamics shed light on the gradual autonomy of a private East–West cooperation group and its contribution to defining a pan-European economic space since the 1970s.