This chapter introduces the supposed problem of ethnicity: that it undermines national cohesion, or is a colonial hangover with no appropriate place in political life. In contrast, I argue that ethnicity is neither inherently desirable nor undesirable; its political effects depend on how it is known and used, and our understanding of how it is known remains underdeveloped. I establish that there is no definitive list of Kenya’s ethnic groups, and we must stop taking for granted what we think we know about ethnicity. I offer the concept of cultivated vagueness – a widespread aversion to resolving the ambiguity of lists of Kenya’s ethnic groups – to understand how ethnic knowledge works and to contrast it with legibility and governmentality. Cultivated vagueness is the response from bureaucrats, civil society, citizens and the state to the conundrum that ethnic knowledge is both common sense and impossible to settle. It also explains how ethnic classifications serve both projects of division and of pluralism. I suggest that attention to the benefits of cultivated vagueness may facilitate the advancement of the latter over the former. The chapter outlines the book’s methodology and chapters.

The conclusion reviews the evolution of transregional Arabic literature from its emergence during the Algerian War of Independence to its transformations in the twenty-first century. Decolonization catalyzed a new literary practice that sought to express Arab nationalist solidarities and critique emergent forms of oppressive power – including those exercised in the name of Arab collectives. The conclusion touches on the ways authors grappled with the faltering of revolutionary hopes and rise of new cultural hegemonies in the present century, notably the establishment of the Gulf as a major new hub for Arabic literature. The author notes the ironic reception of the decolonization generation and its concerns in the contemporary Arabic novel and the queering of Arabness in diasporic literature. Revisiting a key theme of the book, the conclusion highlights literature’s evolving work to imagine, engage, and contest shared political experiences across the Maghreb and Mashreq. The chapter concludes by affirming the ongoing political vitality of calls for linguistic and cultural pluralism in Algeria, as exemplified by the Hirak protest movement.

Chapter 6 emphasizes the Court’s practice pertaining to freedom of expression Article 10) and freedom of assembly and reunion (Article 11). It underlines ‘deliberative pluralism’ as the core principle relevant to tackle the populist erosion of democracy. However, while the Court puts emphasis on deliberative pluralism in its proportionality analysis, the Court only adduces minimal infrastructural guarantees that may be perverted by populist governments, such as ‘procedural guarantees’, while the scrutiny of media bodies and the larger media landscape remains largely cosmetic. This is reflected most prominently in a limited and parsimonious proportionality analysis.

How should people who regard theirs as a (or the) true religion view other religions: their truth, the salvific consequences of believing in them, their role in the world, their eschatology and more? The chapter explores Jewish sources on these questions and devotes much space to an intriguing feature of Judaism: namely, that, in Jewish tradition, seeking converts is discouraged.

This chapter explores how Richard Hofstadter’s scholarly work on populism in American history – and his broader theory of populism as a “paranoid style” – was received by his historical contemporaries and how it continues to shape popular and academic perceptions of populism and the American radical right. Hofstadter argued that disparate movements in American history, from the nineteenth-century Populist Party to McCarthyism during the 1950s, were driven by “status anxiety” and a conspiratorial mindset characteristic of populism. In so doing, Hofstadter introduced concepts such as “status anxiety,” “paranoid style,” and “populism” into the popular lexicon, popularizing a Cold War liberal critique of radical political movements as irrational and misguided. While contemporaries such as Daniel Bell and Seymour Martin Lipset supported his views, historians such as C. Vann Woodward and Lawrence Goodwyn criticized Hofstadter’s account of U.S. populism. By the late 1960s, Hofstadter himself moderated his stance, acknowledging the limitations of his psychosocial theory of populism. The chapter concludes by arguing that Hofstadter’s work, while offering valuable insights, has led to analytical blind spots in understanding the structural and ideological dynamics of the American radical right.

The conclusion of Invisible Fatherland reviews the book’s findings with a view to the rise of Nazism and the concept of militant democracy. Juxtaposing the republic’s constitutional patriotism with Nazi ideology, the author highlights the clash between two diametrically opposed “ways of life.” While Nazism was a violent political order that dehumanized marginalized groups, Weimar democracy embraced plural and hybrid identifications. Although the republic ultimately fell to the Nazi threat, the study argues that its constitutional patriotism remains a positive legacy of Western-style democracy. By reframing the narrative, Invisible Fatherland provides a forward-looking, “glass-half-full” perspective on one of history’s most misunderstood democratic experiments

Despite its explosive growth, there is considerable disagreement about the fundamental purpose of ESG. Two types of policies associated with ESG metrics and mechanisms give rise to at least two opposing views of their purpose: “profit-maximizing policies” versus “normative sustainable policies.” This chapter advocates the second type of strategy, arguing that corporate leaders who embrace ESG should be open to adopting a purpose that may undermine or even intentionally sacrifice shareholder wealth. In defending this view, the chapter considers the question of who has the legal, political, and moral authority to decide on ESG purposes. The chapter argues that business leaders already retain a great deal of legal autonomy in deciding whether or not to adopt some version of an ESG purpose as part of the firm's overall purposes. The chapter then discusses the challenges posed by what the authors call the Political Liberal Problem, which seems to suggest that corporate leaders should refrain from promoting a particular view of the good on behalf of their constituents or stakeholders. The chapter contends that a normative sustainable view of ESG purpose depends crucially on the ability to defend the relatively autonomous moral judgment of business leaders in setting ESG strategy.

The introduction of Invisible Fatherland lays the historiographical and conceptual groundwork for the book’s empirical chapters. The literature review traces the shift in Weimar studies from teleological narratives of inevitable collapse to a more balanced view of the first German democracy. Drawing on Jan-Werner Müller and Jürgen Habermas, the author clarifies the concept of constitutional patriotism by distinguishing it from civic and ethnic nationalism. She critiques the homogenizing tendencies of Weimar political thought, particularly Rudolf Smend’s influential theory of symbolic integration, for limiting our understanding of the republic’s original and innovative political culture. Finally, the introduction engages the work of scholars such as David Kertzer, Michael Walzer, and William Reddy to prepare for an empirical study of the republic’s symbolic style and emotional tone. Altogether, the introduction establishes an analytical framework for recovering Weimar’s constitutional patriotism and its relevance to contemporary debates on democratic resilience.

This chapter further develops the framework presented in the previous chapter. It does so by elaborating upon the value pluralism involved in the umbel view and the substantial interior of the framework. The chapter begins by accounting for the pluralism involved in the umbel view and discussing what that implies for political priority-setting. It then argues that the capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, provides the best available currency of justice for a multiple threshold sufficientarian theory. The chapter then moves on to provide a suggested index of eight spheres of capabilities relevant for sufficientarian justice. The index includes the following items: Basic Needs, Health, Education, Meaningful Work, Political Equality, Community, Social Status, Reasonable Autonomy. The purpose of the index is to serve as input into the further interdisciplinary and public debate on the identification of the justice-relevant threshold. The chapter ends by emphasizing that public policy should give particular priority to manifest deficiencies, such as cases of deficiency clusters, where the same group of people face insufficiency in several value spheres.