Chapter 7 investigates how globalization pressures shape parties’ ideological positioning, which underpins their campaign promises. The chapter focuses on whether parties adapt their stances symmetrically across the ideological spectrum or face electoral constraints when doing so. It argues that mainstream parties – particularly on the left – are more constrained in shifting rightward than vice versa. To explore this, the chapter combines experimental and observational evidence, drawing on a survey experiment and a large-n dataset of party positions in thirty-one liberal democracies from 1970 to 2020. Although globalization can incentivize parties to recalibrate their economic and cultural positions, the chapter shows that electoral incentives mediate how and where these shifts occur. Together, the findings highlight the complex interplay between international economic pressures and domestic political competition, revealing how ideological recalibration can be both strategic and constrained by voter expectations.

Chapter 6 brings in a transnational dimension to the study of China’s image-making in Ethiopia by examining the role of the West in conditioning this encounter. Drawing on interviews with core participants in Chinese initiatives, including Ethiopian elites and Chinese diplomatic professionals, the analysis reveals their shared aspirations for the West, and especially for the United States. Ethiopian participants tend to treat the West as a quality marker, and China as a secondary choice, and at times even as a pathway to experiencing the West. Ironically, Chinese soft power promoters also appear to uphold and aspire to Western hierarchies and use Ethiopia and Africa as a channel toward more desired professional destinations in the West. While Chinese official narratives invoke competition with the West, the actual participants in the Sino-African encounter still strive to be part of it.

In his 1962 essay ‘Does Political Theory Still Exist?’, Berlin responded to the increasingly prevalent sense of anxiety relating to the alleged decline in the coherence and conviction of the subject. He pondered the notion that the contemporary emphasis on empirical inquiry into the actual mechanisms of politics might have undermined the continuing relevance of exploring and evaluating political ideas, and he also reflected on the issue of the extent to which, if at all, political philosophy could and should contain a normative import in its intentions and expressions. This chapter will place the piece in its proper historical, intellectual and institutional contexts, and explain the multiple reasons why Berlin, and many of his eminent contemporaries, had grown so concerned as to its current ‘shadowy existence’. The discussion will conclude by considering the degree of precision and power in Berlin’s defence of the ‘great tradition’ of political theory, rooted in ‘rational curiosity’, not only as a contribution to the most pertinent debates of his own time, but also as a point of reference and cue for reflection for those who remain invested in the activity, as a vocation and profession, in the political culture of today.

Chapter 5 looks at the CBDC controversies in the UK, the US and Sweden.

In the UK there was a high-level discussion centred around a very critical House of Lords Report into the Bank of England’s CBDC proposals. There were also a large and critical public response to a joint Bank of England-HM Treasury ‘consultation’ on the subject. A memorable phrase from these discussions was that a CBDC was a solution in search of a problem.

In the US the Fed’s CBDC proposals ran into a whirlwind of opposition and sparked anti-CBDC bills in Congress. A number of senior Fed officials played an active role in public discussion of CBDCs, and almost all of them were critical of them. CBDCs were eventually prohibited by President Trump when he re-entered office in January 2025

Swedish discussions of CBDCs are interesting because of the way they highlight the connection between CBDCs and the prospect of a cashless economy. The Swedish case is also interesting because a report by Anna Kingberg-Batra in 2023 offered a blueprint for how cash payments could be protected as digital payments become ever more popular.

The chapter also offers a brief overview of CBDC initiatives at the world level – these are widespread but there are currently only five at the implementation level.

The varied topography and climate of Iberia posed challenges for prehistoric hominids, as well as for later traders, fishers, farmers, and herders attracted by the peninsula’s mineral wealth, arable land, and diversity of marine and land animals. Iberians arrived from North Africa, Celts later arrived from the north, and Phoenicians and Greeks arrived from the Mediterranean. All of these diverse peoples brought their culture and language to Spain – founding cities, farming the land, mining, herding, trading, and therefore connecting what the Greeks called Iberia to the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Northern Europe.

This chapter investigates the electoral consequences of broken promises in the context of globalization. Combining large-n observational data with a survey experiment and a in-depth case study of French voters, it demonstrates that voters do punish governing parties for failing to fulfill campaign pledges, and this punishment intensifies in more globalized environments. Contrary to claims that globalization might provide excuses for unfulfilled promises, the findings suggest that globalization amplifies voters’ concerns about competence and follow-through. As ideological differences between parties shrink and governing space contracts, pledge fulfillment becomes a key signal of competence, heightening electoral costs for unkept promises.

I consider how group minds emerge and manifest in the eusocial insect colonies such as that of the honeybee and whether we can learn anything about human group minds from these “superorganisms.” I show that we can, especially with respect to how group minds form via specialized methods for cooperation and suppression of intra-colony conflict. We also learn how group minds develop aggressive personalities (simply add members with aggressive physiologies), and how group minds attempt to protect against parasitization from other colonies/group minds. Finally, we learn the key to eusocial cooperation in groups – namely, assigning reproduction to one caste and making other castes sterile and helpers at the nest.

It makes little sense to write about Indigenous peoples’ rights without placing them in the post-pandemic context, and without articulating their distinct role in the climate crisis. Indeed, Indigenous peoples around the globe find themselves disproportionately affected by extractive operations but also so-called “development” or infrastructure projects – and this concerns, first and foremost, Indigenous peoples’ immediate environment and livelihoods, as sources of subsistence and spiritual significance. Discrimination and marginalization are not new. Since the colonial era, Indigenous peoples have been exposed to external threats, including deadly diseases and systemic dispossession, while often lacking the institutional means to defend themselves. Today, this legacy persists in the form of environmental injustice, prompting sustained and organized forms of territorial resistance and socioenvironmental defense on the ground. At the same time, the burden of protecting the planet’s climate and biodiversity has increasingly fallen to the grassroots – particularly to Indigenous communities. Their knowledge systems, based on long-standing ecological stewardship and intergenerational knowledge transmission, are now gaining recognition, also beyond their own contexts. They are being brought to the forefront of global environmental governance, where Indigenous voices are playing a growing role in shaping the agendas of international climate and biodiversity forums.