Generations of historians have seen the interplay between the early modern state and its armed forces, and between warfare and state formation, as key factors in the process of modernisation. The creation of the modern state was most powerfully expressed through the supposed symbiosis between absolute regimes and standing armies. The image of geometric order and discipline generated by formations of infantry drawn up in kilometre-long battle lines; the authorities’ direct involvement in provisioning, equipping, and uniforming its soldiers; central government’s reach into every aspect of warfare and military planning. All of these have been regarded as defining traits of the interconnection between the standing army and the state. Research on the inner structures of early modern military society has, until recently, been coloured by preconceptions about functioning hierarchies and chains of command, an increasingly effective military administration, rigid discipline, and corresponding efficiency in the waging of warfare. Such a top-down view remained unchallenged as long as researchers relied almost exclusively on sources derived from governmental and/or legal provenance, leaving an impression of overwhelming state authority reaching right down to the level of the common soldier.

This chapter aims to understand the entrepreneurial perspective on legal innovation. How do those who create legal innovation make the services and products that improve the way law is used? The conversation centres on topics such as passion for innovation, identifying needs for new products and services, dealing with failure, keys to success in the market, innovation networks, regulatory approaches to innovation and innovation in the financial services industry. The chapter also considers aspects of innovation that are particular to legal services. Among them are the creation and availability of legal datasets for the application of artificial intelligence and the transferability of legal innovation to other jurisdictions with different laws.

Legal, financial, and regulatory barriers that may hinder the innovation, establishment, and operationalization of nature-based eco-ventures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region must be carefully examined and addressed. While several studies have examined the importance of eco-entrepreneurship as a tool for halting biodiversity loss, an in-depth examination of the legal and policy barriers that hinder the growth of small and medium eco-enterprises (SMEEs) has remained absent. This chapter fills a gap in this regard. It examines the strategic transformations of biodiversity law and policy that are required to promote these pro-biodiversity, nature-based-SMEEs across the region. After developing a profile of law and governance barriers facing nature-based-SMEEs in the region, it proposes dynamic legal solutions for addressing such barriers.

Chapter 2 considers the historical context from which today’s station hustle has emerged as a distinct economic logic and mode of production. It relates the station’s contemporary workings to the history of local economic practices and the wider political and economic changes that have shaped commercial road transport since the early days of motorisation in the early twentieth century, emphasising the role that bus stations have played in these developments. It shows how local transport operators have long harnessed the logics of risk, competition, and shrewd resourcefulness as the principal properties of economic organisation and action, features that have allowed them to both capitalise on and compensate for the weakness of the services provided by the state. The ways in which they have accommodated the effects of state regulatory intervention are consistent with these logics: in most cases, state intervention has been considered just another element of market volatility.

This chapter examines the promotion of entrepreneurship and business startups in Oman and its rhetorical targeting of youth and women. Although innovation is part of the promotion agenda, entrepreneurship is often focused on encouraging citizens to create their own private sector job. The chapter focuses on the experiences of young people in internalising entrepreneurship promotion discourses and in starting personal businesses. It illustrates two key tensions – first, the tension between rentierism embedded within authoritarian governing structures, on the one hand, and the logic of neoliberal capitalism, on the other; and second, the tensions between rhetoric and realities of youth and female empowerment narratives. Entrepreneurship is expressed and promoted as an empowering activity, and at times is experienced as such, but can also be used to legitimise or reconstitute patriarchal and authoritarian structures to accommodate the market. The space of entrepreneurship promotion is both a key tactic of labour market bandaging, and a distinct illustration of rentier neoliberalism

This chapter explores how notions of reciprocity shape new fiscal subjectivities in Ghana’s capital Accra. Drawing on historical sources, public debates and observations in public tax forums, I first discuss the long-term dynamics of ‘tax bargaining’ in Ghana since the colonial times, premised on power holders providing sufficient evidence of recipocity and return for tax payments. Secondly, this chapter provides a portrait of the intimate stakes of reciprocity between the state and citizens that characterize the process of becoming a taxpayer. By zooming in on the aspirations of a single female trader who went through the bureaucratic journey of formalizing her business and becoming a taxpayer, I propose the notion of the “nurturing state” to illustrate the intimate, personalized qualities of reciprocity that characterise emerging fiscal subjectivities in Ghana.

The chapter examines the relationship between the size and diversity of the expellee population and entrepreneurship and occupational change in West Germany. Using statistical data at the municipal and county levels, it documents a reversal of fortune: although expellee presence presented economic challenges in the immediate postwar period, in the long run, it increased entrepreneurship rates, education, and household incomes. The more regionally diverse the expellee population, the better the long-run economic performance in receiving communities.

The chapter examines how the size and diversity of the migrant population shaped economic outcomes in western Poland using statistical analysis. It shows that when state institutions were extractive, the composition of the migrant population played no role in shaping economic performance. Once institutions became more inclusive, however, municipalities settled by more regionally diverse populations registered higher incomes and entrepreneurship rates. The chapter then rules out a series of alternative explanations for these findings.

This chapter explains and discusses the definition of public sector innovation. Public sector innovation includes two concepts or terms: (1) public sector and (2) innovation. The first concept, “the public sector,” refers to the general government organizations owned and funded by the government and may include or exclude state-owned enterprises. The second concept, “innovation,” refers to novel ideas or practices implemented organizations. Thus, novelty and implementation are two key terms defining innovation. Therefore, public sector innovation refers to innovative activities in the public sector, and this chapter provides information about it. In addition, this chapter discusses how and in what ways innovation differs from public management reforms, organizational change, invention, creativity, entrepreneurship, and improvement.