After underlining the importance and currency of the topic of leadership, the introduction of the volume sets out to explain the content and merits of the present volume. The chapters of the volume make significant contributions to the following topics: (a) the vocabulary of ancient leadership: the authors study terms and concepts related to leadership in several ancient civilisations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran, Israel, China, Greece, Rome, and the Late Roman Empire), providing clarifications as to their different nuances; (b) the diverse forms of leadership: the essays of the volume deal with good and bad leaders, intellectual and political leaders, imperial and local, thus highlighting the complexity of the phenomenon of leadership in antiquity; (c) theoretical reflections on leadership: the analysis proposed enables readers to trace elements of leadership theory in ancient civilisations. The merits of this investigation consist in encouraging a comparative reflection on ancient civilisations and in triggering also a critical reflection on modern leadership issues.

Throughout the eighteenth century, hundreds of borough officers – mayors, aldermen, burgesses – were prosecuted in the Court of King’s Bench by quo warranto. The purpose of the process was political: to remove these officers from the parliamentary electoral register. The Municipal Offices Act 1711 provided a legislative foundation for the remedy, and secured it against the objection that it was interference with the exclusive right of the House of Commons to determine the eligibility of electors. While the 1711 Act provided litigants with a judicial alternative to petitioning the partisan Committee on Elections, there were abuses. Litigation was sometimes secretly funded by the government, borough officers were intimidated into disclaiming their office by fear of unsupportable costs, and officers who, for years, had innocently assumed that their titles were secure, were ejected for concealed historic defects. An effort to rebalance the process in favour of the interests of borough officers was made by Charles James Fox’s Quo Warranto Act 1792.

Compared to the developments in the Czech lands, where the idea of a Czech nation had become widespread by the late 1800s, the Slovak national awakening was, for a long time, driven by a relatively small group of enthusiasts. In the nineteenth century, the only highbrow artform to be established was literature. The situation changed radically after the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 when the formation of Slovak national culture became an important political goal in the new republic. This chapter explores the roles of Czech musicians, such as Vítězslav Novák, and musicologists, such as Dobroslav Orel, in shaping the concepts of Slovak national music. Additionally, the chapter traces the ways in which these concepts were developed by Slovak composers, such as Ján Levoslav Bella and Eugen Suchoň. Thus, modern musical culture in Slovakia aimed at authenticity while being steeped in the value system of Czech culture.

We define the category of polynomial functors by introducing its morphisms, called dependent lenses or lenses for short, and we show how they model interaction protocols. We introduce several methods for working with these lenses, including visual tools such as corolla forests and polybox pictures. We explain how these lenses represent bidirectional communication between polynomials and describe how they compose. By the end of the chapter, readers will have a comprehensive understanding of how polynomial functors and their morphisms can be used to model complex interactive behaviors.

Progressives who respond to conservative law and economic arguments by rejecting neoclassical economic theory are making a mistake. Neoclassical economics is the only ideology that honors the modern view – associated with the Death of God narrative in Western culture – that there are no longer universal standards of value. To make a case for redistribution of wealth that appeals to the modern view regarding value – a view that progressives themselves hold – progressives must engage with economics. Fortunately, the concept of the gains from trade in neoclassical economics (also known as "surplus" or "economic rent") allows progressives to make a strong case for redistribution of wealth. That is because gains from trade can be redistributed without harming efficiency by varying the prices at which inframarginal units change hands. This insight is called "inframarginalism" to contrast it with the conservative view that the valuations of the marginal buyer and seller pin down price in competitive markets and therefore prevent redistribution of the gains from trade.

In 1921 representatives of the United Kingdom and of the revolutionary Sinn Féin administration in Ireland signed a conditional agreement that subsequently became a treaty establishing the Irish Free State. Lawyers played an important role on each side, none more so than F. E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead), the then UK Cabinet Secretary. Thomas Jones observed caustically that ‘it is notorious that a lawyer cannot draft his own will clearly’. As regards the ambit of a Boundary Commission proposed by Article 12 to redraw the border created in Ireland in 1920 by the United Kingdom, Irish leaders Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins ultimately relied on British goodwill. Birkenhead depended on his knowledge of legal precedent and the Privy Council. This chapter considers the professional status of lawyers on each side and suggests that a certain ambiguity in the agreement enabled a settlement more readily than any insistence on absolute clarity would have.

Chapter 1 retraces the history of the critical reception of Hegel’s social and political thought, from the publication of the Philosophy of Right to the present. The chapter discusses the charges of conservatism raised by Hegel’s first critics, the liberal rehabilitation of his work in the second half of the twentieth century and the communitarian interpretation introduced in British and American debates from the 1980s. Finally, the chapter focuses on the ‘middle ground’ approach favoured today by most Hegelian scholars, based on a compromise between the liberal and the communitarian positions. This kind of interpretation is undoubtedly a step forward from the one-sided approach of many previous readings. However, by favouring the practical dimension of Hegel’s arguments over their logical or metaphysical foundations (an attitude referred to as methodological pragmatism) and by regarding the social dimension of freedom as an adjective rather than a substantive component of his position (an attitude referred to as structural individualism), this interpretative trend ends up reiterating the liberal framework Hegel seeks to transcend.

This article reconsiders Shakespeare’s treatment of Englishness as far more provisional and divergent than has traditionally been understood. Attending to persistent inter-community conflicts in Merry Wives and Henry V, it presents Shakespearian history as defined as much by the lower and middle classes as by titled noblemen.

For many generations, Indian historians have grappled with the importance of Rammohan Roy (1774–1833) (Figure 1.1) within the histories of print journalism, prose literature, and religious reform in early-nineteenth-century Bengal. For some, he is the “father of modern India,” the progenitor of reforms and progress in these areas, a “Universal Man,” a father of “new learning,” given his emphasis on English-language and Western-style debate, discourse, and thought. For other historians of India, he was a tool of imperial power, who constantly sang the praises of the English Company. World historians have seen him as an Indian-style French revolutionary and, in recent parlance, as a constitutional liberal.

When religion enters the picture, many assess his work according to the success or failure of his various ideas and critiques regarding religion. Rather than approach his writings and intellectual labors through a measure of failure or success from the perspective of post-1830s India, this chapter explores the precise nature of those ideas about religion and the institutions nurtured in the wake of those ideas, with a view toward understanding the significance of his work in the history of religions. Building on the recent work of Brian Hatcher, who emphasizes Rammohan's relationship to polity building and political life, I place him in a history of religion as opposed to a history of nationalism, liberalism, or empire. Questions about universal religion, true religion, and revealed religion, as well as demarcating lines between what constitutes religion and what constitutes a space outside of religion, have animated historical actors within a variety of traditions since at least the seventeenth century.

This chapter argues that the prevalent way for theorizing international organizations cannot properly account for the conceptual relationship between these institutions and states. At closer inspection, the popular treaty/contract versus subject/constitution frameworks for looking at international organizations address only the structural relationship between these institutions and their members. Nevertheless, one cannot simply assume that international organizations count as states for legal purposes just because they enjoy a legal personality that is distinct from their members, or because they share some relevant similarity with them. Equally important problems arise with analysing international organizations as merely another name for their member states acting together, and thus reducing the former to the latter. This view tends to disregard the fact that international organizations are often membered by entities that are neither states nor international organizations. Followed consistently, it also undermines the supposed distinct legal existence of these institutions.

In the digital economy, quality is increasingly becoming the predominant variable of competition. Markets are expected to seek out that state of affairs in which product quality rather than efficiency is maximized. But an effective conceptual resolution of what constitutes product quality is more complex and elusive than previously thought, and there has been a widespread repudiation of the notion that dominant online platforms can be held accountable for failing to deliver something that a single descriptive standard would command them to produce. Furthermore, microeconomic theory provides little guidance for evaluating how adjustments in the level of competition in a market have a bearing on product quality. This chapter suggests that claims relating to product quality can best be resolved by underscoring loyalty. Product quality, viewed from this perspective, provides a framework for assessing the behavior of digital platforms while at the same time legitimizing the manner in which zero-price markets operate. The issue is most prominent with regard to search engine rankings, privacy, and the sale of goods in online marketplaces.

The chapter considers the nature of lexical borrowing and the challenges of identifying the contribution that it has made to the lexicon of English. It looks at the major sources of data, especially historical dictionaries. It considers the importance of identifying by whom a word is used, and in which contexts. It also examines phenomena of discontinuity and multiple inputs in the histories of words, and the challenges that these present for constructing linear histories of English words, and larger-scale narratives of the history of the lexicon.