This article analyses the development of Italian health policies in the post-Second World War period. Shortly after the setting up of the ‘Beveridge model’ and the creation of the British National Health Service, Italy also introduced a new approach to health, which became part of the Constitution. However, the implementation of the necessary reforms was delayed due to resistance from the country's institutions and government parties. The introduction of a radical health reform became possible only in 1978 through pressure generated from social conflicts, trade unions and left-wing parties. The implementation of the National Health Service encountered a number of obstacles due to the specific conditions of Italy, but also owing to changes at the international level. The neoliberal policies started in the 1980s introduced restrictions in health spending, the regionalisation and privatisation of services, and a new selective approach to health. In spite of these limitations and contradictions, the Italian healthcare system has been considerably successful, leading to strong improvements in health and to a life expectancy at birth among the longest in Europe. The recent developments – and the experience of the pandemic – confirm the important impact of a public, universal health service and, at the same time, the persistent policy efforts aimed at weakening its reach.

Taking as a starting point the variation in introspective judgments on embedded gapping in English in the literature, the main goal of this paper is to test the ‘No Embedding Constraint’ experimentally. Building on a first experimental study designed to measure the interaction between that-omission and factivity in English embedded complement clauses, we conducted two experiments testing the role of the complementizer in embedded gapping, paying special attention to the semantic nature of the matrix predicates (non-factives vs semi-factives vs true factives). Our results show, on the one hand, that the ‘No Embedding Constraint’ makes too strong claims that are not backed up by our experimental findings, and, on the other hand, that embedded gapping is affected by both the presence/absence of that and by the semantic class of the matrix predicate in English. In particular, embedded gapping seems to be more acceptable under non-factive verbs, especially in the absence of a complementizer. Both constraints (that-omission and factivity) can be accounted for by a constructionist fragment-based analysis, where the gapped clause is a non-finite phrase that has to address the same Question Under Discussion as its source. This explains, in turn, why embedded gapping under true factive predicates is considered significantly less acceptable. We show that the acceptable cases of embedded gapping involve true syntactic embedding (so, the matrix clause has no parenthetical use). We conclude that English has the same sensitivity to the semantic class of the matrix predicate as other languages, but that the requirements on the presence/absence of that are English specific.

This article looks at different strategies in which authoritarianism operated in relation to the redesign of Skopje during the rule of the conservative party VMRO-DPMNE and its leader Nikola Gruevski. It argues that the promoters of the urban project called “Skopje 2014” relied on a set of nondemocratic mechanisms and involvement and coordination of various individuals and institutions on all levels to implement and legitimize the project and expand its political dominance. These ranged from state-driven mechanisms and urban design strategies to contributions of non-state groups, thus demonstrating a systematic effort behind the makeover of Skopje. Examining the project through the concept of authoritarianism, the article goes beyond (methodological) nationalism to understand the complexity of the revamp of North Macedonia’s capital. It also demonstrates how the party used its ideological principles to leave its enduring mark on Skopje’s urban environment. Additionally, the article points out the need to study urban space politics in the context of hybrid and competitive authoritarian regimes.

We provide a variety of empirical arguments in favor of a paratactic account of recomplementation constructions, in which a left-dislocated element appears in between two complementizers. Contrary to integrated analyses assuming Complementizer Phrase (CP) recursion or Rizzi’s split periphery, we assume that the dislocated phrase is structurally independent from the embedded clause it precedes, which in turn is an elliptical sentence fragment. The juxtaposed fragmentary sentences are linked by the doubled complementizer, which serves to overtly flag a ‘restart’ in discourse. We show that this account makes a range of welcome predictions while sidestepping non-trivial problems that arise for integrated/cartographic analyses, which assume that dislocated XPs are in left-peripheral positions (such as Spec-TopicP) and that the doubled complementizer spells out Topic0. A further advantage of the approach is that it provides a handle on recomplementation constructions beyond the core cases involving left-dislocation, which reduce to a mere subcase of the general phenomenon of elliptical ‘restarts’ in discourse.

I present a qualified new defense of antinatalism. It is intended to empower potential parents who worry about their possible children’s life quality in a world threatened by environmental degradation, climate change, and the like. The main elements of the defense are an understanding of antinatalism’s historical nature and contemporary varieties, a positional theory of value based on Epicurean hedonism and Schopenhauerian pessimism, and a sensitive guide for reproductive decision-making in the light of different views on life’s value and risk-taking. My conclusion, main message, to the concerned would-be parents is threefold. If they believe that life’s ordinary frustrations can make it not worth living, they should not have children. If they believe that a noticeably low life quality makes it not worth living and that such life quality can be reasonably expected, they should not have children, either. If they believe that a noticeably low life quality is not reasonably to be expected or that the risk is worth taking, they can, in the light of their own values and beliefs, have children. The conclusion is supported by a combination of the extant arguments for reproductive abstinence, namely the arguments from consent, moral asymmetry, life quality, and risk.

This essay discusses the reading records of Francis Russell, 1587–1641, later 4th Earl of Bedford. Drawing from a previously unstudied manuscript notebook from 1620 to 1622, the author demonstrates the importance of Russell's private archive at Woburn Abbey as an important repository for political, literary, and cultural history in the early Stuart age. The notebook evidences how a nobleman of Russell's wealth, stature, and influence prepared for political office, and more broadly, how he educated himself. The notebook contains a wide variety of texts, among them histories, sermons, poetry, political pamphlets, treatises, news, and gossip, much of which Russell brought to bear on the acute political Bohemian crisis then emerging, and on its consequences for domestic politics (for example, the 1621 Parliament). The notebook's contents also reveal more about early modern reading practice and the organization of knowledge and suggest the many networks of circulation through which Russell acquired his books, manuscript tracts, and oral information.

To this point, nineteenth-century Bombay – including its urban development, economy and population – has most often been analysed in relation to the city's position within British imperial, and overseas maritime, networks. In contrast, this article calls into question established scholarly definitions of ‘colonial’ and ‘princely’ spaces in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India, through an in-depth examination of Bombay's socio-economic ties with wider Indian networks. It focuses on connections that stretched across colonial borders and into the princely states, suggesting that both the city's economy and its business elite were rooted in cross-border Indian capital networks. It further highlights the contributions of Indian princes, their states and populations to the development of urban culture in Bombay.

Alexander Zambrano sets out to refute an argument that I have made on a number of occasions over many years since 1992, which he calls “Harris’s Greater Need Argument” (2002).

After a brief overview of ethical issues in an Australian context catalyzed by the current pandemic, this article focuses on data protection in the light of recent debates about COVID-19 data tracking in Australia and globally. This article looks at the issue of trust as a fundamental principle of effective and ethical COVID-safe measures undertaken by the government. Key to ensuring such trust are Habermasian participatory dialogs, which assume trust as a condition of authentic illocution, and an emphasis on short-term data capture.

The public debate on voluntary termination of life by elderly people, which has been an intensely controversial subject in the Netherlands for some time, has centered around the issue of “completed life” in recent years. In 2016, an ad hoc governmental advisory committee concluded that the already existing Euthanasia Act provided sufficient scope to resolve most of the problems related to the issue. Most of the older adults who feel they no longer have anything to look forward to in their lives and who have developed a wish to die as a result would be able to invoke this Act. Partly for this reason, the committee considered broadening the legal options relating to assisted suicide undesirable. Analysis of the assessment practice of the regional euthanasia review committees reveals that the room for interpretation offered by the Euthanasia Act is indeed considerable.

Canada is six years into a new era of legalized medical assistance in dying (MAiD). The law continues to evolve, following a pattern in which Canadian courts rule that legal restrictions on eligibility for MAiD are unconstitutional and Parliament responds by gradually expanding eligibility for MAiD. The central tension underlying this dialogue between courts and government has focused on two conceptions of how to best promote and protect the interests of people who are vulnerable by virtue of intolerable and irremediable suffering due to an illness, disease, or disability. Do we, as a society, have a duty to protect vulnerable people from seeking certain medical procedures that are contrary to their interests, as those are perceived by others? Or do we have a duty to uphold their rights to autonomy, including the right to make choices within a range that may be constrained by many factors, some of which may be socially unjust? This is a recurrent problem in bioethics and medical law, which we explore through the lens of how Canadian courts and Parliament have grappled with defining eligibility for MAiD.

This article reconstructs the heated – local and national – debate around the consistent and pervasive foreign presence in the border territory of Lake Garda on the eve of the Great War. Here, the growing nationalistic tensions that preceded the conflict intertwined with the emerging hospitality industry. Tourism, seen as a social phenomenon, can thus offer a privileged perspective on the transformations of the general context of the time. Introduced by Austro-Germanic inhabitants of the lake at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the hospitality industry on Lake Garda flourished up to the eve of the Great War. There were, however, also opponents to this model of development. The dispute escalated to the point that, in the perception of the locals, the ‘outsiders’ turned into ‘enemies’ and Lake Garda increasingly became a disputed area: a symbol of the tensions of the time.

This article contributes to discussions on culture wars, memory politics, and the politics of dead bodies. It uses the example of the annual celebration of the liberation of the city of Pilsen by the American army in 1945 to demonstrate the use of the concept of “political necromancy.” The Pilsen celebrations are one of the events during which participating politicians use fallen (or suffering) soldiers as an argument to support current political goals. Metaphorically, the politician as a necromancer brings the fallen back to life and sends them as an army of the dead to fight in culture wars and memory wars. The article focuses on introducing the different strategies used in this process (depersonalizing the fallen or creating a ghost hero) and shows how dead bodies and the appropriate use of memory politics are used to bolster foreign policy ties to the US and to lash out against Russia and communism.