Chapter 9 investigates how political parties strategically use ambiguity in their campaign pledges to navigate the policy constraints imposed by globalization. As international integration limits domestic policy discretion, parties – particularly those in government – face a dilemma: how to appeal to voters while avoiding promises they may be unable to fulfill. This chapter combines observational evidence with original cross-national data on pledge clarity to demonstrate that parties increasingly rely on ambiguous language to maintain electoral appeal while reducing the risks of future accountability. The analysis reveals that this trend is most pronounced for governing parties and those operating in highly globalized economies, where the tension between responsiveness and responsibility is particularly acute. Rather than abandoning pledges entirely, these parties blur their commitments, complicating voters’ ability to hold them accountable and thereby altering the democratic chain of delegation. Ambiguity thus emerges not as a signal of incompetence or deception but as a strategic adaptation to the pressures of international economic interdependence.

The most striking aspect of Berlin’s thinking about political judgement is how he treats moral principle or moral rules as a factor in political judgements. Political judgement, as he defines it, is a capacity that he praises irrespective of its moral character or its consequences. So how did Berlin believe moral considerations did shape political judgement? If he thought of political judgement as a skill, an experience-based ability to size up a concrete situation and evaluate risks and opportunities, in a time-bound context, he thought of moral judgement in exactly the same way. In both political and moral behaviour, he doubted that rules, principles, formalized ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ could be determinative. The situation was everything. An essay on Berlin’s idea of ‘political judgement’ will have to unpack Berlin’s moral psychology, confront the question of whether he praised moral ruthlessness a little too much and ask whether his conception of political judgement ends up sidelining ethics as a crucial factor in political decision-making.

This chapter deals the nature and typology of null subjects. Three types of null-subject language are distinguished: radical null-subject languages, consistent null-subject languages and partial null-subject languages. Together with non-null-subject languages, these form a four-way typology, which is presented and explained.

Isaiah Berlin argues that philosophy has a distinctive task, one which cannot be appropriated by the natural sciences. One of the reasons Berlin gives for holding that philosophy’s task falls outside the scope of science is that its area of reflection essentially employs normative concepts. An understanding of the human agent must, in the end, encompass an understanding, not only of meaning and intentional action but of the moral, political and aesthetic life of fully acculturated human beings. Although Berlin’s historical approach to this task was highly distinctive, his aims and his convictions concerning the relation between philosophy and science, the central place of the human agent in philosophy, and his anti-reductive, anti-positivist approach were shared with a number of his Oxford contemporaries, in particular G. E. M. Anscombe and P. F. Strawson. In this chapter, I look at how these three philosophers understand the nature of philosophy and the relation between philosophy and science, focusing particularly on their attitude to the topic of determinism.

Berlin’s essay on ‘The Counter-Enlightenment’ was strikingly pivotal in renewing and extending his twentieth-century reputation as a towering contemporary intellectual giant: for the concept of ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ became a central feature of his continuing relevance to intellectual debate in the 1970s and through the last quarter of the twentieth century. Among its strengths, it figured as a partially successful effort to draw attention in Anglophone lands to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German philosophy as a vital aspect of the early nineteenth century’s cultural shift to Romanticism and reaction to the Enlightenment. But its importance extends much further than that. For while it profoundly dismayed some, it proved profoundly thought-provoking for many with its eloquent promotion of intellectual history to centrality and front-rank status viewed as an aspect of the humanities and of philosophy itself. Its distinctive combining of philosophical study and insight, and delving into history, impressed many with burning secular, pluralist and ethical zeal.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) arose as a reaction by central banks to the threats posed to their currencies by cryptocurrencies. The process began with the development of digital currency, which required the prior development of strong cryptography. These developments led to the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, and its success then prompted the development of other so-called cryptocurrencies especially stablecoins. These in turn led to the idea of CBDCs, which were first proposed in 2013. The threat posed by Facebook’s proposed Libra cryptocurrency in 2019 then galvanised a subsequent ‘CBDC mania’ among central banks that is still going strong. However, this mania was misconceived and will prove to be embarrassing to its proponents when its underlying folly becomes obvious for all to see. It turns out that CBDCs have no distinctive useful functions and come with serious drawbacks as well.

The result is that there is no rational use for CBDCs, which should therefore be dismissed.

The major dynasties and rulers in each period are listed along with their dates, from medieval times through the eighteenth century. For the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, monarchs, regents, dictators, and elected heads of government are listed along with their dates in power.

Isaiah Berlin’s essays on Russian writers are among the most compelling in his oeuvre. Of these, ‘Herzen and His Memoirs’ is a particularly notable instance of scholarship, both for its insights into the ideas of Alexander Herzen and for what it reveals about Berlin himself. The purpose of this chapter is to review Berlin’s account of Herzen and then situate it relative to the literature on Herzen (particularly at the time it was written) and appraise it for the light it sheds on Berlin. For while it was initially written as an introduction to another writer’s work, it can also be regarded as a prompt to consider not only Berlin’s views about the reception of European thought by various Russian authors during the nineteenth century, but also his thoughts on Soviet scholarship in the West during his own day. Similarly, ‘Herzen and His Memoirs’ provides an exemplary instance of Berlin’s own scholarly style, where a strikingly personal tone is evident in his appreciation of Herzen’s work. Part commentary, part confessional, ‘Herzen and His Memoirs’ provides a singular account of one of Berlin’s favourite Russian writers, as well as a mirror of Berlin’s own beliefs and talents.

It is not uncommon for people to observe the impossibility of ever fully knowing others, but to affirm that with sustained contact, developed intimacy and empathy, we can at least gain some sense of their inner experiences and begin to imagine life from their perspectives. The method of historical understanding which mirrors this viewpoint was introduced into modern Western European thought by Vico and Herder, and thereafter transmitted by Croce to Collingwood, and by Collingwood to Berlin. It is also common for people to observe that in important respects they know others – friends and family – better than those others know themselves. The method of historical and cultural understanding which matches this insight is that of ‘outsideness’, pioneered by Bakhtin. This chapter shall discuss these radically different yet in some ways complementary approaches, arguing that Berlin’s historical method is not wholly dependent upon ‘immersion’ but relies also on the recognition of anthropological constants across historical and cultural boundaries, in a way that echoes Bakhtin’s view that certain ideas enter ‘great time’.