In Leviathan Hobbes’s attention newly focuses on the practice of governing. There are five new chapters (22–-25, 27–28) on matters of government structure and policy which would concern a real ruler – in the obvious, immediate instance, Charles, the Prince of Wales. Versus the familiar theoretical question of whether Hobbes’s absolute ruler would have reason to govern well, good government is the subject of these chapters in a more practical vein. Like the policy binders prepared for incoming governments today, they advise on such domestic programmes as taxation and criminal justice and counsel the ruler to maintain control in relationships with subordinates. First, it is of interest to compare Hobbes’s ideas with Stuart and Tudor policies so as to assess their currency: How modern was his political thinking? Second, from a philosophical angle, these discussions are salient to current interpretations of Leviathan as a model of nonideal theory. Hobbes is telling rulers how to create a decent state in the context of real-world politics, a state that – albeit in necessarily imperfect ways – serves the public welfare, their subjects’ good, and their own.

This chapter reflects on my experience as the Director of the ACT Parks and Conservation Service, highlighting my involvement in the Mulligans Flat-Goorooyarroo Woodland Experiment at Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary (MFGO) from 2004 to 2022. It discusses the evolution of the Experiment, a long-term initiative aimed at woodland restoration, and its impact on the ACT Parks and Conservation Service. The experiment not only provided valuable insights into woodland management, but also fostered innovation and community engagement.

The chapter emphasises the creation of a predator-proof fence at Mulligans Flat, collaboration with academic researchers, and the integration of evidence-based management practices. Key challenges, such as reallocation of staff and developing specialised knowledge, are explored, as well as the transformation of conservation efforts in the ACT. The Experiment and MFWS has become a model for adaptive conservation, highlighting the importance of partnerships between government, researchers and the community in promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management practices.

Chapter 2 discusses Swift’s statement of political principles, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions (1701), and shows how international relations proved essential both to his fully developed, neoclassical balance-of-power theory as well as his practical political objectives in contemporary debates about the constitution and emerging War of Spanish Succession. Swift wrote against the Tory majority in the House of Commons and thus attacked the tyranny of the majority – but he also took a more realistic and permissive view of popular political participation than has been acknowledged. That view reflected his belief in the voice of the people and consensual government, including when discovering the national interest within the international context. The masses helped to rescue England from French imperialism, just as threats of French hegemony put the domestic political need for power-sharing into perspective. Swift defends executive action for the sake of national security but does not abandon constitutional constraints.

This chapter focuses on the different contexts of English teachers around the world. It begins with an important paradox that we face as teachers of English – the question of how we balance between the need to accommodate our learners’ multilingualism in our classes and the need to focus primarily on developing a limited part of this multilingualism: their English repertoire. It provides a critical historical background to the English-only and English-mainly approaches that dominated language teaching in the twentieth century. The chapter then looks at key aspects of education that are likely to influence translanguaging pedagogy. These include the different stages of education, from primary to secondary, tertiary and adult learning, as well as distinctions between commonly identified types of English teaching, including EFL and ESL, BANA and TESEP contexts, CLIL and EMI approaches. The chapter also explores the influence of language and education policy on the language classroom and closes with an opportunity for us to explore the influence of our own beliefs and values on what we do in our classrooms.

This chapter examines how death and dying are perceived to be knowable and manageable through end-of-life care. Leveraging extensive ethnographic research about English palliative and end-of-life care since 2010, the author scrutinizes how policies shape perceptions and practices surrounding the care of the dying. This includes discussions on how the end of life is understood within policy, influenced by palliative care philosophy and practice, and how this influences experiences and expectations of death and dying. Through detailed descriptions, the chapter highlights the impact this has on perceptions about when dying is recognized, the centering of needs-based approaches to care, and the cultural values evident in how “good” dying and death are discussed and idealized. Contrasting policy assumptions with lived experiences, the author invites an analysis of the limits of palliative and end-of-life care as frameworks for understanding dying and death. Ultimately, the chapter emphasizes the necessity for nuanced approaches to end-of-life care, portraying dying and death as not only inescapable facets of life but also deeply entrenched in social and cultural contexts that warrant consideration.

Education policies and frameworks are often structured by evolving political ideologies, public discourse, societal needs, and multifaceted types of media; requiring educators to remain informed about socio-political contexts aligned to education and to navigate the shifting education policy discourse landscape. It is within such a landscape that education policies and frameworks serve to provide information that supports and guides teachers in aligning their teaching and learning practices with national and/or international standards. By incorporating policy and frameworks into daily teaching, teachers make sure legal and ethical responsibilities are met, but also curriculum guidelines, assessment regulations, and inclusion requirements are adapted and applied, to meet all learners’ needs and professional obligations.

Welcoming new teachers to the profession provides an important opportunity to build the foundations for professional growth, satisfaction, and positive impacts on students’ lives. Creating a meaningful dialogue and orientation helps new educators transition into their roles with confidence while developing a reflective, adaptive, and student-centred practice.

This chapter locates business in the economic thinking of the Single Market Program, which transformed regional economic, commercial, competition, industrial, and social policies and remade the relationship between firms and European governance. It examines the wide-ranging approaches of European officials to enterprise as they made collective Community agreements and designed policies for the internal market. Cabinet documents and speeches from regional policymakers in the European Commission shed light on the tensions between promoting the regional economic activity of firms on the one hand and increasingly regulating the market and its actors to protect consumers, workers, and the environment on the other. Ultimately, it argues, the Commission saw Community-wide business activity as the key to achieving the market and its wider economic and social objectives. By supporting cross-border mergers, acquisitions, investment, partnerships, and the development of regional supply and value chains, regional policymakers aimed to reassert the power and influence of a united Europe in the global economy.

Since the 19th century, the U.S. military has grown increasingly adept at saving the lives of troops injured in combat. Yet rising survivability rates, coupled with social attitudes linking disability to diminished manhood and economic dependency, contributed to a perceived national crisis about what came to be known as the “problem of the disabled veteran” (PDV). What is U.S. federal policy toward disabled veterans? What is its aim—to keep veterans alive or to help them reintegrate into postwar society? And how might the U.S. military curb disability in future conflicts? Drawing upon works in disability studies, military history, and war and society studies, this chapter surveys the evolution of U.S. efforts to solve the PDV, from the colonial era to the present. In World War I, when the term originated, anxieties about war disability prompted the federal government to embrace the policy of veterans’ rehabilitation. In later years, the military would explore other ways to limit U.S. wartime casualties, disabled or otherwise. Ultimately, this chapter argues that the PDV stems from the United States’ failure to come to terms with the violence and trauma of military conflict.

This chapter offers readers perspective on ideals and practices that shaped health-related treatment of former service members from the Revolutionary period through the end of the Cold War. Studying how veterans fought for and accessed health services over two centuries offers a compelling view of the wide-ranging impacts of military endeavors on policy and politics and on the individual lives of service members and civilians. It also brings into sharp relief the extent to which norms of civilian society – for example, changing perceptions of how diseases are classified and what constitutes proper care – influence wars and perceptions of them. Broadly, the chapter shows that, while veterans’ care became more bureaucratized and institutionalized over time, some realities were constant: the nature and extent of available services, and the ways people interpreted them, were dictated by former service members’ advocacy, as well as prevailing notions about governmental responsibility, illness and disease, disability, and medical practice. Most broadly, the history of veterans’ experiences related to health care reveals that war and society are inextricably and intricately linked.

Civil service headcount expanded, but, as it grew, relationships between civil servants and ministers deteriorated and individual civil servants became targets as perceived blockers to true Brexit. Stasis in decision-making in Theresa May’s carefully balanced Cabinet degenerated into public disagreements between ministers as collective responsibility disintegrated. Ministerial churn accelerated. Ministerial frustration at Parliament’s refusal to pass any sort of Brexit agreement under the May government boiled over, and judges found themselves in the firing line as the process of exiting was litigated. The devolved governments were reminded that conventions were just that, without legal force. Northern Ireland suffered two Executive collapses in the Brexit period, the second a direct result of Brexit tensions, which left it governed by civil servants for half the time between 2017 and 2024. Under Boris Johnson, ministers went further – prepared to embarrass the Queen over the prorogation that the Supreme Court eventually found unlawful, introducing legislation to allow them to break international law and flirting with breaking domestic law.

It started with good intent; the battleground a different and older Union and an earlier referendum in 2014 over Scotland, not Europe. I didn’t see this at the time, but think if it hadn’t come hot on the heels of the Independence Referendum the civil service would have taken a different and more careful approach in 2016. We would have been more protective of the principle of impartiality and seen the EU Referendum as the deeply political and divisive vote that it turned out to be. It had been okay in Whitehall to express a view in the Scottish Referendum – we wanted the Union to stay together. So, just as we were happy in September 2014, people were upset at the result in June 2016. It was normal to express views in the open that leaving the EU would have grave and damaging consequences, especially economically, as it had been normal in 2014 to say the same about Scotland. For both the commonplace presumption was that the people who had voted to leave had not understood how things worked. We rolled from default remain to default remain.

Psychiatrists have responded nationally and internationally to the growing scientific evidence on spirituality and psychiatry and to concerns about bad professional practice, by developing good practice guidelines/policies and by way of continuing professional development initiatives (special interest groups, conferences, etc.). Professional boundaries have historically been understood as keeping psychiatry, as a secular concern, separate from patients’ spiritual and religious concerns. However, as earlier chapters demonstrated, this is unrealistic in light of the entanglements of spirituality and psychiatry, and unlikely to be helpful for many patients. It does not address the importance of religion to patients worldwide or the transition in Western countries from a secular to a post-secular age. The Jungian concept of temenos is taken up as a way of understanding boundaries as protecting safe therapeutic spaces for psychological and spiritual transformation. Boundaries in clinical practice are thus created not to keep the psychological and spiritual domains separate but to protect a safe psychological and spiritual space within which positive therapeutic change may occur.