There's a breathless hush in the close tonight –

Ten to make and the match to win –

A bumping pitch and a blinding light,

An hour to play and the last man in.

And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,

Or the selfsh hope of a season's fame,

But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote –

‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

The sand of the desert is sodden red,

Red with the wreck of a square that broke;

The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed his banks,

And England's far, and Honour a name,

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks; ‘Play up!

play up! and play the game!’ – Henry Newbolt, ‘Vitai Lampada’

My head is full of the ghosts of men in white playing games before the Great War.

– Hilary Mantel

If the village green was one favourite setting for the cricket story in fction, the public school was the other, and it was from these two very diferent sources that the association of cricket with Englishness fowed. Test and county cricket fgure very little in fction, one reason being that the contained settings of the village and public school function more readily as versions of the nation at large than other forms of the game. Common to both is a feeling of being the member of a community.

In the twenty-first century, after so many failed experiments, has the concept of ‘urban utopia’ finally become obsolete? Certainly not. Futuristic cities and communities are still being envisioned. Dulik (2023) lists several North American examples proposed or backed by major private corporations or individual male billionaires: Donald Trump's “Freedom Cities” to be built on federal land; Elon Musk's Snailbrook, a private “Texas utopia” for his employees; Praxis Society's “city-cryptostate” in the Mediterranean, supported by major Silicon Valley venture capitalists including Peter Thiel and the Winklevoss twins; Marc Lore's “Telosa” in the American Southwest or Appalachia; Alphabet's “smart” neighbourhood in Toronto; and Meta's Willow Village next to its headquarters in Northern California. These models are as patriarchal as the ones we critiqued in this book. Moreover, many amount to conservative techno-utopias, lacking the social progressivism of some of the early models we discussed.

Sadly, outlandish visions are no longer confined to the North Atlantic. As the world goes through a Fourth Industrial Revolution, and wealth grows everywhere alongside inequality, masculinist dystopias are being proposed or built across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While outwardly glossy, projects like Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates, NEOM in Saudi Arabia, Próspera in Honduras, Bitcoin City in El Salvador, and Zim Cyber City in Zimbabwe “serve as little more than geopolitical PR projects, intended to launder reputations and absorb international investment” into “deregulated crypto-ruled tax havens” (Dulik 2023). This is disquieting, more so because, given the financial and political clout of their patrons, the realisation of these proposals appears to be inevitable.

Chapter 2 presents the conceptual political economy frame-work of the EQx anchored by the dual notions of Power and Value and discusses how these are operationalized within the EQx architecture. The discussion proceeds to review the index construction methodology that has been applied to the EQx.

2.1 Deep Dive into the EQx

The EQx proposes an analytical framework to interpret—and possibly transform—the state of the world's political econo-mies. It is based on a simple idea. The EQx posits that the business models chosen and run by elites determine economic and human development. That is, elites (the ‘who’) affect hu-man and economic development outcomes (the ‘what’), some-times directly and mostly indirectly via their sway on institu-tions (the ‘how’) that set the rules of the game. These rules bestow on elites a ‘license to operate’. Both the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ have been theoretically discussed at great length and are amply measured. Measuring the ‘who’ element in the po-litical economy is the research gap that we seek to pursue. We do so at the national level, by considering the aggregate national elite systems in terms of the Value Creation and Value Extraction impacts of their primary business models.

Elites are a mathematical certainty and exist in every society on earth. Their business models generate the most income and are run by leaders possessing the strongest coordination capacity over society's key resources, such as human, financial, and other capital. Moreover, the business models of elites successfully accu-mulate wealth. Crucially, these business models can be located on a continuum, which ranges from Value Creation to Value Extraction.

The introductory Chapter offers a series of general reflections on the EQx, its main findings, and how these link to the future. First, data analysis is discussed to illustrate how the measure-ment of Elite Quality provides novel analytical perspectives for predicting a country's future. Next, the critical subject of Arti-ficial Intelligence (AI) and elites is considered with discussions on its emergence and the technocratic prospects of how it might contribute to policymaking based on the elite theory of economic development. Intergenerational transfers are also analyzed, and the NextGen Value Creation Barometer(NGVCb) is presented.

In subsequent chapters, the EQx2025 is unpacked in Chapter2 with a deep dive into its structure and associated method-ological issues. In Chapter 3, the full global rankings and scores for 2025 are provided. The crux of the report lies in Chapter 4: the analysis and interpretation of the EQx2025 results by a community of EQx contributors—this year com-prised of 28 authors—who consider the outcomes on a coun-try, Indicator, and EQx-Indicator Family basis. Chapter 5 delves into the Indicators used in the report, providing de-tailed explanations, the rationale for their inclusion and how they are weighted. Chapter 6 presents the151 country score-cards, each using up to a maximum of 149 Indicators and 17 aggregate measurements (including scores for the 12 Pillars, 4 Index Areas, and the 2 Sub-Indices of Power and Value). The report closes with the full set of references in Chapter 7.

Introduction: Morality and Current Debates

Today, everyone is a moralist. Citizens, as well as politicians, are adept at drawing lines between good and bad, between who they side with and who they regard as enemies. They know – or at least feel – that Putin is a despic¬able dictator and Zelenskyy, a fighter for freedom and democracy; that they live in a world where they – thank God – are allowed to elect their leaders, who subsequently do what they can to secure their life and happiness; that it is good to love animals and totally right that criminals are punished; that rooting for your country, in sport and war, is admirable, while criticising your nation is not; that lying, cheating, stealing and fornicating are sins, while leading a modest and ascetic life is virtuous; that you should not envy the rich and powerful, but rather be thankful for what they contribute to our welfare, growth and national unity; that bringing up children, working hard and pay¬ing your taxes should be your own contribution to the same project and so on.

All this seems so self-evident to citizens that they rarely reflect on the nature of their moral being, nor on why they themselves frequently overstep the line and commit breaches against the moral code. When they do so, they admittedly often do it with a guilty conscience, but this does not keep them from holding their fellow citizens on a tight moral leash and exposing their hypocrisy.

• A. How does this topic fit into my overall argument?

  • 1. I wrote earlier: ‘what reason is in any particular context is revealed by the shape of the form of life in question’.

    • a. (having argued that the authority of reason derives from the authority of the form of life it shapes)

  • 2. But the ‘shape’ of a form of life is marked precisely by the concepts involved in it.

  • 3. ‘Reason’ is not something that stands above the particular concepts of our discourse; it's a function of those concepts.

    • a. This seems to lead to the conclusion that there are as many ‘reasons’ as there are forms of life, well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it's an exaggeration of a truth.

• B. The constitutional direction of authority derivation is quite different from that of concept formation.

  • 1. E.g. the policeman's authority (something a child learns pretty early, I imagine)

  • 2. Something like what Wittgenstein says of the formation of a world picture applies here. ‘Light dawns gradually over the whole.’

    • a. Insofar as it does! It is possible – even usual – to get by with a pretty primitive picture of the world of authority, I imagine.

  • 3. The relation between the applications in the context [in] which a concept is learnt and what is thereby learnt – which may include the ability to question those original applications.

    • a. This is why Wittgenstein's philosophy is not constitutionally ‘conservative’ (not to say reactionary).

      • i. ‘Philosophy leaves everything as it is’ – including the possibility of criticism!

    • b. Not ‘sociology of knowledge’ (in any deterministic sense)

Gorgias: stage-setting (everything I want to discuss except the authority of the state! For that we must go to Crito – and Republic?)

We must distinguish between the (dramatic) form and the content. The relation between these must be understood if we are to get a proper picture of what the dialogue is saying. The content might be expressed as the place of language in human life. This, with its many and surprising manifestations, is discussed by the participants. But it is also exemplified by the participants in the dialogue. Socrates's way of using language, along with the manner of life with which this belongs is contrasted with those of his interlocutors. [I.A.1. and I.A.2]]

What is rhetoric? In fact this is soon widened by Socrates (Plato) to something like: what is discourse? [I.B.–I.B.1.]

[There are] two sorts of persuasion: Philosophy and politics. What is the authority of these two kinds of persuasion? [I.C.1.–2.]

The Importance of This Topic for ‘How Is Political Authority Possible?’

The root of the problem about political authority lies in the question what sort of reason have the edicts of an acknowledged organ of political authority. The question, one might say, concerns how the notion of political authority fits under the general category of rationality. In his representation of the figure of Socrates, Plato tries to depict, as it were, reason in action; and he does this in large part by contrasting Socrates's demeanour and procedures with those of the other protagonists in the dialogues. [I.A.2.] But his interest also has a deeply political dimension.

• 1. Let me put together the topics we have discussed, and chart a course.

  • a. The distinction between conceptual/grammatical questions and questions about the functioning of institutions. [Session 1; Chapter 3.2]

  • b. More about that distinction in relation to Hobbes and Rousseau. Hobbes's idea that understanding one's political obligations requires knowledge of a ‘science’ versus Rousseau's emphasis on education/upbringing. [Session 6; Chapter 3.4]

  • c. More on that last contrast. The limits of ‘argument’; the cave in Plato's Republic; Polus's failure to understand Socrates in the Gorgias. [Sessions 4 and 5; Chapter 3.3]

  • d. Authority as a reason for acting: the importance of the distinction between concepts and institutions once more; what counts as a reason for acting? – Socrates and Polus. The good and what is to one's ‘advantage’. [Session 5; Chapters 2.3 and 3.3]

  • e. Do human beings always seek what they take to be good? Claggart and Britten's opera Billy Budd. Relevance of this issue to politics: the assumption that rational action requires deciding what it is best to do according to one's own lights seems incompatible with doing something just because someone else says so. [Session 5; Chapter 3.3]

  • f. ‘Reason’ and ‘cause’. More about Hobbes from this point of view; contrast with Austin. [Session 4; Chapter 3.4]

  • g. The difference between an inquiry into the nature of authority in a particular state at a particular period and philosophical inquiry into ‘the nature of political authority’. Locke on the 1688 Settlement versus his claim to speak about ‘political power’ as such. [Sessions 7 and 8; Chapter 3.5] Locke on consent express and tacit. [Chapter 3.6]

Strategies, Sources, and Opportunities

The future development of strategies with positive effects on urban livability and experience as climate change continues to evolve is the future challenge. The endeavor will continue to require the development of a range of priorities and strategies needed to achieve and sustain positive responses and outcomes. Much will depend on the vision and resources available to communities as climate change and the need for viable strategies continue to influence cur¬rent and future planning and design. The requisites acknowledge the evolv¬ing third phase of climate change, with its unknown extent of effects on urban livability and the current and future requirements communities may poten¬tially confront while attempting to establish sustainable outcomes for achiev¬ing equitable access, livability, and positive identity in the future. Inevitably, these and other factors will respond to the effects that climate change may have on the prospect of urban landscape contexts and the quality of future livability in cities and towns.

The degree of current and future challenges that communities are likely to experience in the immediate future could be sufficient enough to direct current efforts to produce strategies as environmental and cultural factors continue to evolve. The two prime concerns are equity and climate mitiga¬tion in urban contexts. The current expectations are based on immediate experiences and outcomes. The potential issues in future priorities and strate¬gies are the unknown factors relative to the climate models currently in use regarding present and future climate qualities.