In the classical social contract tradition in the philosophy of the state (roughly Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), there is a tendency to make everything too explicit, as it were. This is connected with the fact that their central concern is the citizen's ‘reasons for obeying’. It comes out in more than one way:

• A. [I.A.3.a] At the receiving (citizen’s) end it comes naturally to talk in terms of deliberations, leading to decisions or choices. (Of course, I am not endorsing this, simply recognising it for a fact.)

• B. [I.A.3.b] At the dishing out (state’s) end, it comes naturally to describe that which the citizen ‘obeys’ as a command. This holds more for Hobbes and Rousseau than it does for Locke.

More attention is paid to the citizen's relation to the highest organs of the state [I.A.] than to his relation to subsidiary state organs (police, magistrate's courts, employment offices, national insurance offices, etc.)

This list is indeterminate in two respects: firstly, of time and place; secondly, in respect of doubt as to what is to count as ‘state’ function (e.g. schools, money). [I.B.2.] State and society often come to be confusedly identified, e.g. in the regulation of professional training. The distinction between social control and political power thus may be elided.

On schools J.M. Coetzee [I.C.1.], reviewing an autobiographical work by Helen Suzman, writes of the destabilising effect of gangs of young black teenagers, who have refused to attend school:

Current and Future Priorities, Strategies, and Opportunities

At this point, the progress that cities and towns have accomplished regards priorities and strategies related to urban livability and identity. The focus has included references to climate action sources that have defined urban land¬scapes and their value to communities. To some extent, much of what has been accomplished up to the present time is a summary of the challenges and accomplishments that have made many cities livable, though still in need of specific improvements, including equitable access to urban amenities. Since 2022, climate change has evolved into a third phase with its severe quality of intense heat and storms. While the third phase of climate change progresses in response to 2030 climate standards, many cities and towns have pro¬duced heat action plans, in addition to their existing general climate action plans. Such efforts define the third phase of this text with its emphasis on the future of climate change and its potential effect on urban contexts. The focus includes current strategies for enabling equitable access to enhanced urban landscape connections and places in underrepresented urban locations.

The synthesis of ecology and culture in current and future community climate strategies and outcomes is a source for evaluating current planning and design applications and is the focus of this chapter. The issue of climate change and the existing need for enhanced equity includes the opportunities for the enhancement of underrepresented contexts. By providing individuals with the opportunity to connect to urban places with a level of refinement, walkability, livability, and identity, their contribution to the quality of experi¬ence in urban contexts becomes an equitable accomplishment.

Connections and Current Access

The focus on specific urban landscape strategies pertinent to livability, equity, and experience during the current and future presence of climate change has been a prime interest during the past several decades. Multiple factors pro¬vide the stage for urban landscapes to advance equitable access and climate mitigation as contributors to levels of experience. From initial impressions to refined aesthetic experience, the quality and location of the fundamental experiential process provide references for the existence and significance of opportunities to connect with nature in urban contexts. Perception, interpre¬tation, and response are included in the quality of such experience and pro¬vide levels of individual interaction with nature. The experience confirms the value of urban factors with the quality to generate interest in urban contexts at a level to produce notable individual experience. The future challenge is the presence of effective climate mitigation strategies and equitable access to nature as livability and experiential influences.

Access and connection to nature derive from the lengthy period of human pre-settlement until the appearance of the Agricultural Revolution. During that time, humans managed to survive by way of hunting and gathering through the seasons. By at least fifteen thousand years ago, with the warming of the planet and the increase in human populations in the Near East, perma¬nent settlements began to appear throughout the region. Our long-term inter¬action with nature continues to support the presence of nature in urban and suburban contexts as a health resource. Since the appearance of permanent settlements, formal gardens and green street enhancements have appeared in many settlements, though access to such amenities was variable over time.

For democratic politicians, morality is both instrumental and personally nor¬mative. It is an instrument to ensure that citizens properly internalise the behavioural ‘code’ matching politicians’ social and political goals, such as ‘personal responsibility, personal initiative, self-respect and respect for others and their property’ (Thatcher, 1983). In domestic dealings with their power, they try themselves to observe such moral guidelines, if only to demonstrate that they belong to the same moral community as their subjects.

Nevertheless, they are not quite on a par with the rest of us. Sometimes they choose to engage in actions that, by ordinary standards, would be denounced as cruel, inhumane or downright evil, but this is not because they are bad persons; it follows from simply being engaged in politics. ‘Politicians need to be judged by a political ethic where they can legitimately dirty their hands in the pursuit of worthwhile and noble goals’ (de Wijze, 2019). In other words, we must understand that the moral standards of politics are different from those of civil society. This also applies to democratic politics. The ulti¬mate proof of this is war, where politicians tend to embrace moral attitudes not just on behalf of their citizens and soldiers but on their own behalf as well. In such extreme cases, they abandon both legalistic constraints and material calculations and go the ‘whole hog’ for the sake of the nation's pride, identity and self-respect.

War is the touchstone of politicians’ moral normativity, the point at which good must in the end conquer evil and where they are judged by higher stand¬ards than simply helping to protect private property and accelerate ‘growth’. They must no doubt beware of the danger of committing ‘war crimes’, but in the heat of the moment, this matters less than victory and national honour.

Hume's essay ‘Of the Original Contract’ makes two criticisms of Locke's theory that political authority is based on consent. Both of them are relevant to understanding Rousseau's position.

No one seriously believes that authority is founded on contract; Governments would not accept it as a let-out; Subjects themselves do not believe it (the deposed prince); and talk about ‘tacit consent’ is ludicrous (the press-ganged mariner).

The ‘more philosophical’ objection. To derive the obligation to obey the state from a promise gets one nowhere, since the obligation to obey a promise is just as problematic, and in just the same way, as the obligation of allegiance. The point is something like this. What is problematic about accepting the authority of the state is that I regard my will in the present situation as ‘bound’ by something external to it (the will of the Sovereign perhaps). But this is unintelligible. Something is either subject to my will or it is not. If it is, then that is as much as to say that I am able to do as I think fit within the limits of what is possible. What the appeal to consent does is to say that my present will is bound, not by someone else's decision, but by my own past decision; but this is no more intelligible than what it is supposed to explain. If I can will, I can will.

Where does Rousseau stand with regard to these points? In a sense he accepts them both (without mentioning Hume), but draws diametrically opposed inferences. With respect to the first point, he argues that it is true that no states in fact are based on such principles.

Intention and Preferences

A prime opportunity for cities and towns is the potential to utilize existing local urban landscape qualities as sources for the enhancement of landscape connections and places. The application of this opportunity is often a key fac¬tor in the preservation of livability and identity in their respective urban loca¬tions. The application of potential bottom-up enhancements is a prime focus for many communities interested in the role and use of existing inductive bot¬tom-up context qualities as priorities for enhanced livability and community identity. Bottom-up responses to urban context enhancements are a focus in this discussion, with references to the three themes of the text, including time, resources, and livability. The discussion recognizes the role that bottom-up strategies play in the enhancement of connections and places, emphasizing the opportunity for the use of bottom-up planning and design strategies in urban landscapes. However, the broader issue is the need for equitable access to urban landscape enhancements within underrepresented urban locations.

Within the past decade, bottom-up preferences and strategies have contin¬ued to evolve as resources in line with the need to provide equitable access to urban landscape qualities. Urban locations with historical significance, unique scale, materials, and efficient connection are examples of bottom-up opportunities for the preservation of identity and livability in urban contexts that are sustaining enhancements in response to current and future climate change. The significant difference concerns what communities have so far been able to produce in terms of livable and equitable landscape contexts and what communities may be able to accomplish in the future. Both rest on being able to endure current and future climate change and maintain via¬ble livability strategies.

10 Theses

1.

The relationship between war and peace is complementary, not contradic¬tory. Reasons of war are produced in peacetime. Peace is no antidote to war. Carl von Clausewitz realised as much in On War back in 1832:

We say therefore War belongs not to the province of Arts and Sciences, but to the province of social life. It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others. It would be better, instead of comparing it with any Art, to liken it to business competition, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still more like State policy, which again, on its part, may be looked upon as a kind of business competition on a great scale. Besides, State policy is the womb in which War is developed, in which its outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like the qualities of living creatures in their germs.

Stanley Hoffmann, following Rousseau, phrases the same insight differently, while turning a famous Clausewitz dictum on its head: ‘peace treaties (are) nothing but stratagems […], the continuation of war by other means’ (1987, 34; see further the second thesis below). Kalevi J. Holsti also had an inkling: ‘Peace then becomes the father of war’ (1991, 353), but his ‘then’ marks an important caveat: ‘peace settlements’, in his view, may provide a means to alleviate and cope with ‘issues’ in the future, can allegedly help produce ‘less war-prone international orders’. However, on the basis of Holsti's detailed analysis of ‘armed conflicts and international order 1648–1989’, peace does not strike the reader as a solution to the ‘issue’ of war, but at best as a tem¬porary delaying factor, at worst as utopian idealism.

The EQx project has developed a variety of interpretive for-mats. The ‘Country Scorecard’ format captures on one conve-nient page the full set of a country's EQx Scores, from the head-line Level 1 EQx Index score to the 149 more granular Level 4 indicators.* The Country Scorecards can be conveniently uti-lized for interpretative purposes by offering a 360-degree view of a country's political economy.

Chapter 4.1 is a highlight of the report offering deep-dive analyses of Country Scorecards by leading economists, polit-ical scientists, and management scholars from around the globe. Each analysis constitutes an original interpretation of how a given country has and will fare viewed through the prism of Elite Quality. Chapter 4.2 provides the indicator Scorecard perspective, exploring individual phenomena of Value Creation/Extraction, which are discussed in compara-tive terms across countries. Chapter 4.3 reviews five EQx-Indi-cator Families: Artificial Intelligence, Diversity & Inclusion, Ecology, Health & Well-Being and International Business.

4.1 Country Scorecards: Deep-dive Analyses

Argentina

Elite Quality Explains the Paradox of Undeveloped Potential

Argentina has fallen significantly in the EQx2025 results (rank #86) compared to its performance in 2024 (rank #70).

A ‘hegemonic stalemate’—the struggle between two hege-monic groups with antagonistic visions for the country's devel-opment that alternate in power without sufficient time to imple-ment their vision in a lasting manner and with effective results—can be clearly seen in how Argentina approaches economic and human development.

The Genesis of the Book

The paradox of authority [is that] it must be, yet apparently cannot be, compatible with reason. By and large the classical social contract tradition (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) has tried to show that authority is, or can be made, compatible with reason; Hume is the most formidable critic of this tradition.

Hume (nearly) sees that the reaction to authority is something primitive. I initially concentrated on developing this insight, e.g. in the early Aristotelian Society paper.

This did involve seeing the social contract account of the relations between authority and reason as back to front; and I did try to develop this (‘Authority and Rationality’ in The Human World and ‘Certainty and Authority’ in Wittgenstein Centennial Essays).3 But I still didn't see clearly enough how radically a proper understanding of these relations undermines not merely certain orthodox conceptions of the authority of the state but also certain orthodox conceptions of reason and logic.

In this way I get from political philosophy to the philosophy of logic. If we think that reason must be the source of authority we must ask what is the authority of reason. This is now my more fundamental concern.

Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Wittgenstein are the writers I shall mainly be referring to: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau as representing the social contract tradition; Hume as a critic of that tradition; and Socrates, Plato and Wittgenstein as offering a wholly different conception of reason and its relation to authority.

Having analysed each planner's work separately, we now synthesise the main themes that characterise this collective body of work as masculinist. Our synthesis is placed in the context of the urban history unfolding during the Second Industrial Revolution, as presented by contemporary feminist schol¬ars. Additionally, we discuss the preoccupations of female planners, archi¬tects, and social reformers who were active in that era. As we explain, their focus was distinct from that of their male peers.

Central Themes in Masculine Early Utopias

Rigid form and triumphal scale. A reverence for geometry, order, and standardi¬sation, which emerged during the Second Industrial Revolution, reflected a hegemonic and monolithic vision of the city, with low tolerance for cultural and physical difference (Frisby 2003). This goes against social-anarcha-femi¬nist tenets of co-design and communal decision-making. With male planners at the helm, the city became a series of discrete objects instead of an “ensem¬ble of relations” (Frisby 2003).

While some thinkers protested this approach, most early planning treatises can be understood as a masculine fantasy of control – of space, time, women, race, and the rest of life (Hooper 1998; Johns 2010). Unsurprisingly, dur¬ing that era, romantic notions of place and time came to be associated with female sentimentality (Flanagan 2018). Even Howard and Unwin, who advo¬cated for human-scale settlements, did so in a paternalistic manner. Planners who emerged from the architecture profession, such as Sitte and Taut, were overly concerned with physical form, neglecting other aspects such as health, the economy, or the environment. Whether they were imagining utopias or intervening in existing settle¬ments, most early planners envisioned the built-up spaces within cities and the natural landscapes surrounding cities as a blank slate, containing little historical memory or ecological value.

Discussion of my question ‘How is political authority possible?’ should have brought out that it is akin to the question: ‘How is political authority compatible with reason?’. The assumption has been that the acknowledgement of such authority must somehow be based on reason. And some of the difficulties we have encountered have suggested that this may not be the right question to ask. I want now to turn the question round: instead of asking for the reason of authority, let's ask: what is the authority of reason?

This is one important aspect of what is under discussion in Plato's Gorgias. So let's return briefly to that.2 The question the dialogue opens with concerns the nature of the skill Gorgias claims to teach. It is a technique of persuasion and Socrates is critical of the claims Gorgias makes on its behalf. In developing his criticisms he distinguishes Gorgias's rhetoric from a form of discourse based on a contrasting principle, a discourse which obviously Socrates's own practice is supposed to exemplify.

The difference is that Socratic dialogue is said to be informed by a genuine logos in a way rhetoric is not. Socrates aims at knowledge, not just belief, at truth and not just changing his interlocutor's mind. What interests me most here is that Socrates does not describe the difference in the way most of us probably expect him to. He does not say that Gorgias aims merely at persuasion, [and] Socrates at something else. He says that there are two sorts of persuasion that [are] practiced by Gorgias and Socrates respectively.

It seems to me that the dialogue as a whole can be read both as a discursive treatment and at the same time an exemplification of what the difference between these ‘sorts of persuasion’ consists in. The content and the form of the dialogue go hand in hand and reinforce each other.

From Wittgenstein's Culture and Value, page 17e:

Wittgenstein was using this political language as a metaphor for Ramsey's attitude to questions in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. But what he says applies marvellously to much work, both contemporary and earlier, in political philosophy proper.

The distinction drawn is very important to me in the context of the seminar; and I want to start by considering some of its ramifications. At the same time I want to sketch two issues which are pivotal to the problems I should like this seminar to concern itself with.

What, first, did Wittgenstein have in mind in relation to mathematics? I can only guess, but my guess would be he had in mind the attitude of most philosophers of mathematics: that their problems are internal to the practice of mathematicians. Now with regard to this: Questions [that] it's natural to think of as ‘philosophical’ certainly do arise in the context of fundamental work in mathematics (and other sciences). Cf. Einstein's problems about simultaneity in connection with the Special Theory of Relativity. More strongly, probably the most interesting questions do arise in this way.

An important question is: are these questions to be put aside as settled, when the position is reached that mathematical work can continue unimpeded? or is something else required? I think it's the latter attitude that Wittgenstein had in mind when he spoke of ‘real philosophical reflection’.