The study of European capitalism since 1945 has revealed three key findings. First, Europe’s governance of capitalism has been marked by four main periods: : 1) embedded liberalism (1945–73); 2) global attempts at mixed capitalism (1973–92); 3) high neoliberalism (1992–2016); and 4) the return of community capitalism since 2016. Second, Europeans have invented an original system to reach compromise between both states and the three types of capitalist governance, thereby offering choice, far from the image of a neoliberal technocratic dictatorship. The European Union is a mix between the influence of many countries, including Germany, France, and Britain, in addition to Italy and many others. Third, the trinity points to three alternatives that were – and still are – present: the neoliberal free-trade area, the socio-environmental alternative and the challenge of the return of community capitalism, between protectionist tensions, Fortress Europe and the possible hollowing out of the European Union from the pressure of growing nationalism.

Chapter 7 presents the first analysis of the abolition of the death penalty in Britain’s Caribbean Dependent Territories in 1991 based on recently declassified government records. The decision to impose abolition reflected the broad changes in crime and governance in the Caribbean over the preceding decade and the new diplomatic significance of British death penalty policy, but in the short term it was entangled with a scheduled execution in Anguilla and a dozen more capital cases that were pending in other Caribbean Dependent Territories and Bermuda. Britain was forced to abolish the death penalty in part because the likelihood of an execution seemed higher than in many years. The appointment of Douglas Hurd, an abolitionist, as Foreign Secretary was also important, but even so the change of policy was motivated by politics rather than principle. Abolition had been forced on the government as the only sure way to prevent executions that – it had become clear – posed intolerable risks to British interests, but Britain was still far from adopting a consistent abolitionist foreign policy.

The twentieth century saw a considerable number of rewritings and adaptations of the Arthurian legend, in as many styles and purposes as there were writers, cultures and national heroes. Two main and sometimes paradoxical tendencies appeared: a quest for a supposedly deeper historical knowledge, and a need to popularise Arthurian themes. As Nazis launched their own quest for the Holy Grail, a subsequent need to re-enchant the world was expressed throughout the century. By adapting medieval texts to insist on their modernity for a contemporary readership, authors, artists and creators insisted on the universal aspects of the Matter of Britain, using it to emphasise the disillusionment in our modern Western societies, or on the contrary to expose the alleged wonders of an immutable human nature. The twentieth century confirmed this wide malleability, as Continental Europe regularly found in King Arthur a symbol of its own preoccupations.

How and when did New Zealand Aotearoa begin? In human history the short answer is recently. New Zealand was the last major landmass settled by people, which is fundamental to understanding New Zealand’s distinctiveness. Before humans arrived, birds and lizards were the dominant land animals. Archaeologists have agreed, after decades of debate, that the first humans arrived from the late thirteenth century, about 750 years ago. These adventurers undertook epic, oceanic voyages in large, double-hulled waka hourua (voyaging canoes) from their legendary homeland of Hawaiki, in East Polynesia, southwards to the temperate region of ‘South Polynesia’, a term coined to encompass both New Zealand’s main islands and its outlying islands. Today, the indigenous people trace their ancestors to over 40 celebrated waka (canoes). South Polynesia as a concept reminds us that New Zealand is a far-flung archipelago that stretches from Raoul Island, in the subtropical Kermadec group, to the subantarctic Auckland Islands, and to the Chatham Islands, which lie 800 kilometres to the east of the South Island.

The 1930s and 1940s witnessed a formative era in nation-building, through the conscious ‘making’ of New Zealand. At the same time, New Zealanders had to ‘make do’ through depression and another world war, and these global onslaughts only intensified the quest for security at home and abroad. Making do and creating a nation moved in symbiosis, because, as often happens with the evolution of a sense of national identity, panic, crisis, anxiety, or rupture produces stories and rituals to soothe and explain. This context saw the rise to power of the first Labour government, which resolved to pick up where the 1890s’ Liberal model of state development left off.

The book’s emphasis is on Americans who in private capacities went overseas between 1935 and 1941. The quandaries faced within the United States and around its geostrategic edges are here probed with less reference than is usual in World War II historiography to holders of high office, military authority, or diplomatic responsibility. This approach allows two related things. First, the reader and I can contend with the churning national identity as it had evolved when the United States skirted around but then plunged into the Second World War. Albeit a nebulous concept, tied to eternal scholarly wrangles on “imagined communities” or Abraham’s Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory,” my use of national character/identity functions as shorthand for the contradictory US mood and attitudes of 1935-1941: earnest, avaricious, high-minded, sour, naive, shrewd, indecisive, provincial, universalistic. Second, this assemblage of expats is valuable in that it reflected, and lets us elucidate, the fault lines of political allegiance and personal preference that ran through the country before Pearl Harbor. In an important sense, this book destabilizes the notion of “American.”

Some of the most decisive battles over the responsibilities of transnational corporations (TNCs) have been fought in domestic courtrooms – often far from where the alleged abuses occurred. The United States has hosted a substantial proportion of such cases against TNCs, supported by a legal framework that historically provided several plaintiff-friendly avenues. However, the landscape has become more challenging following the Supreme Court’s decisions in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and Daimler AG v. Bauman. In Canada, the absence of an ATS-equivalent and the application of the doctrine of forum non conveniens have limited opportunities for litigation. However, recent decisions suggest more cases may flow to Canada in the future. In the United Kingdom, developments in the law relating to parent company liability have been particularly significant. In Across continental Europe, barriers such as limited access to class actions, prosecutorial discretion, and weak disclosure obligations continue to constrain transnational human rights litigation.

Drawing on the comparative findings from the six case studies of this book, this chapter contrasts policy triage patterns across countries, sectors, and administrative levels. The chapter highlights that while Denmark stands out due to its generally low triage levels thanks to well-funded, consensus-oriented governance, Italy and Portugal exhibit frequent and severe triage due to rapid policy growth, few limitations of blame-shifting, and scant opportunities to mobilize resources. Germany falls into an intermediate zone where bureaucratic rigidity fosters mostly moderate triage, while the UK and Ireland display more heterogeneous patterns across organizations in both sectors. The “aggregated” country patterns align well with what we would expect from the countries’ administrative traditions. Among other aspects, countries with a stronger legalistic tradition tend to exhibit more consistent triage patterns, whereas those where more independence is given and managerial leeway is granted to the authorities show more varied practices across organizations. Across the board, with regard to the cross-sectoral variation, the chapter highlights that environmental implementers tend to face more triage than social implementers, due to weaker overload compensation and greater opportunities for political blame-shifting. Furthermore, central- versus local-level differences tend to hinge on two key mechanisms: Organizations at the national level sometimes demonstrate robust capacity for resource mobilization and blame-shifting insulation, while subnational bodies, especially in Italy and Portugal, often lack such buffers. Across all settings, partial overload compensation can stave off the worst consequences of triage, yet some agencies’ capacities are already stretched beyond their limits. Taken together, these observations underscore the pivotal roles of limitations of political blame-shifting, resources mobilization, and organizational overload compensation in determining how policy implementers across Europe contend with administrative overload as a result of policy accumulation.