Andrews ” Reath offers a new interpretation of the doctrine, set forth in the Critique of Practical Reason, that the moral law is given to us as a “fact of reason.” Reath proposes that we understand this doctrine through the idea that what is given in this fact is the reality of a basic rational power. He argues that Kant accepts a generally ‘Aristotelian’ conception of a rational power, so that pure practical reason is a rational power with its own formal end and its own formal principle, which we know to be the moral law. Exercises of this power are (in some sense) guided by a subject’s consciousness of its formal principle, and therein lies its spontaneity and self-activity.

This chapter lays out the book’s argument in two parts. First, it first develops the concept of self-determination as understood by state and non-state actors in the Global South to apply to the legitimate exercise of power in the international system. Rather than requiring strict sovereignty and exclusion of outside actors, self-determination is about the nature of cooperation and international involvement. It requires that people, through their governments, be able to domestically affirm international rules and to meaningfully participate in their enforcement. The second part of this chapter explains how establishing regional organizations as an authority over issue areas can be a strategy for realizing self-determination and why, in the case of human rights, it necessitated compromising on the norm of non-interference. This strategy is effective at deterring pressure from Western governments because it combines and appeals to widely held beliefs about the legitimacy of self-rule with beliefs about the importance of exercising power through international organizations.

Why have regional organizations become authorities over human rights and international intervention, and what explains the differences in regional authority across different regions? Why did leaders in some parts of the Global South go from rejecting any interference to arguing for the central role of regional organizations in international interference? This chapter introduces the central questions addressed by this book and provides an overview of its core argument, focusing on the creation of new regional authority at one important moment: the emergence of regional organizations as authorities over human rights. This was the first time when leaders in the Global South changed from arguing for complete non-interference to arguing that legitimate interference should be carried out by or with the involvement of regional organizations. They did so as a strategy of subtle resistance to new challenges to self-determination, in the form of economic enforcement of human rights by Western governments. In regions targeted by this enforcement, leaders responded by establishing their regional organizations as authorities over human rights, accepting regional interference for the first time.

This chapter explores implications of the argument made in this book for other areas of international relations scholarship and for contemporary international politics, with regional authority and self-determination continuing to occupy an important place in the international politics of the Global South. It considers how incorporating the importance of self-determination, and the idea of regional organizations as a means of realizing it, can provide more complete understandings of contemporary political phenomena. I discuss how the argument in this book sheds light on the Global South’s dissatisfaction with liberal norms and institutions, the openness of democratic states in the Global South to cooperation with illiberal powers, and present-day dynamics of regionalism, including the creation of “new” regions and the growth of “authoritarian” regional organizations.

David Foster Wallace’s work is soaked through with self-help practices – from Infinite Jest’s satirical-yet-serious portrayals of recovery culture to the critiques of self-absorbed personal growth cultures in his novels and stories and his more positive accounts of intergenerational advice transmission. Chapter 1 considers Wallace as writer and public advice giver, focusing on his posthumously published novel, The Pale King (2011), his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, and manuscripts from the Wallace archives, including an unpublished and unstudied letter composed in 1990 for James Harmon’s edited collection, Take My Advice: Recommendations for the Next Generation. I focus on Wallace’s lifelong engagement with self-help as a troubled but productive space through which to explore his concerns around public and private life, generational and gendered communications, and the transition to adult citizenship, and suggest that Wallace’s fantasies of advisory authority emerge, in part, as a response to the social fragmentation and individualism he attributes to post-1960s self-help.

The major purpose of this chapter is to reduce the confusion that exists in the marketing discipline as to the meaning of power. Thus, channel power is first defined as a construct. The value of the supplier achieving major channel coordination objectives through power and its appropriate use cannot be overestimated. An explanation is given as to why sales manager power is critical in direct channels. Then, how firm power can be built in inter-firm relationships with distributors and retailers is explained. An evaluation is made of the strengths and weaknesses of channel coordinators applying supplier power through alternative communication strategies with intermediaries. Importantly, the factors leading to firm control of company salespeople and independent channel members are recognized. Finally, an analysis is made of how suppliers can effectively deal with powerful intermediaries.

Chapter 4 elaborates a new theory of chilling effects – as conformity and compliance. The author argues that chilling effects are best understood as a more powerful form of conformity and compliance – just like conformity, chilling effects reflect a behavioral tendency to self-censor and conform in the face of threats like surveillance, uncertain laws, or personal threats. The chapter also elaborates what the author deems the four “chilling effect” factors: observation; uncertainty; personalization or personal threats; and power and authority, which help predict and explain chilling effects. The chapter explains not only why chilling effects are so powerful in their impact on our behavior, but also their additive effects – how each additional chilling effect “factor” amplifies or magnifies the impact and scope of a chilling effect.

Chapter 3 examines what has given Trump a motive to publicly challenge IHL. Section 3.1 details how foundational moral values tend to make conservatives more receptive to overt challenges to IHL. It describes how Trump and various right-wing allies have activated these values, which mirrors tactics Trump has used in other areas of campaigning and governance. Section 3.2 presents findings from an original, national survey of U.S. respondents fielded in 2020 during Trump’s first term. Results from four separate experiments show that conservatives tend to disregard IHL more than other respondents, which correlates with emphasizing their foundational moral values. Additionally, treatments using real-life video clips of Trump demonstrate that impunity coalition messaging can magnify these effects.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, young and mostly urban Egyptian men and boys started writing in new ways. Inspired by the recent emergence of mass-circulated print fiction in both books and periodicals, they became infatuated with writing fiction. Their writerly endeavours often clashed with the textual preferences of their fathers, and represented a major shift in the understanding of what written texts are for, and who can write them.

One check on the abuse of power by the political elite is the ability of people to move away from those who abuse their power. In agricultural societies, this is difficult to do because individuals who move must leave their land behind. Land is not mobile. One result of the Industrial Revolution was that capital displaced land as the most significant factor of production, and capital is more mobile than land. The mobility of physical and human capital has constrained the abuse of authority and has contributed to the shift from feudal political institutions toward democracy.

The scope of authority of the political elite tends to expand because those in authority seek more power, and the masses often perceive problems and demand that those in power do something to address those problems. The demands of the masses are supported by the academic concept of market failure, which legitimizes the expansion of the elite’s scope of authority. Despite theories of market failure that are used to justify government action, most government programs do not correspond with the problems identified by economic theory. Interventions in response to the demands for government action often create additional unforeseen problems, which leads to more demands for government action. The result is that the scope of authority of the ruling class tends to continually expand as the political elite identify problems and the masses demand that the elite address those problems.

Institutions that lower transaction costs are effective only to the extent that they are enforced. Effective enforcement requires that the enforcers are able to display a capacity to use force sufficient to make people perceive that noncompliance would be futile. Institutions of authority, based on the threat of force to be used against those who do not comply, are controlled by the political elite. Once the ruling class has this authority, they can use their power to extend their scope of authority to other activities, such as producing goods and services and redistributing income and wealth. Because institutions of authority are a necessary foundation for an orderly society, there is no effective way for the masses to escape from being subject to them.

This chapter gives an overview of dictionaries, broadly conceived to include monolingual and bilingual wordlists for readers at all levels, in the history of English from the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon literacy to the present day. It argues against a reductive view of dictionaries as primarily agents of standardisation and authority, expressions of the ‘dismal sacred word’. Its arrangement is roughly chronological, beginning with Anglo-Saxon glossography and the lexicography of later medieval English, before turning to the bilingual and monolingual English dictionaries of the early modern period; to the monolingual dictionaries of the eighteenth century; and to the relationship of lexicography to two very important aspects of Late Modern English, namely its pluricentricity and its use as an acquired language. It concludes with a last look at the relationship of English lexicography with the ‘dismal sacred word’.

Heresiological catalogues are one of the most distinctive forms of literature concerning heresy and have also traditionally been one of the most difficult to interpret. This chapter traces the development of this form of writing, focusing on the most productive period in late antiquity, and explores how much such works were intended to be employed in active ‘heresy-hunting’ and what other purposes they might have had, including increasing the authority and status of their authors.

This chapter surveys different ways in which ‘heresy’ has been conceptualised by a variety of writers, both within the periods in which it arose and in later centuries. Tracing a number of different inflections to the charge of heresy, the chapter suggests that we might see it not only as constructed by orthodox authority but as a means by which ‘authority’ itself is reaffirmed; and in conclusion suggests some ways through which modern historians might then reconceptualise their search for ‘dissent’ in past times.