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This article proposes revisions to the theory of political transitions by analyzing patterns of recent popular challenges to neopatrimonial rule in Africa. The approach is explicitly comparative, based on contrasts between Africa and the rest of the world and among regimes within Africa itself. Arguing against the prevalent view that transitions unfold unpredictably according to the contingent interplay of key political actors, the authors contend that the structure of the preexisting regime shapes the dynamics and sometimes even the outcomes of political transitions. They find that in contrast to transitions from corporatist regimes, transitions from neopatrimonial rule are likely to be driven by social protest, marked by struggles over patronage, and backed by emerging middle classes. Following Dahl, the authors compare African regimes on the basis of the degree of formal political participation and competition allowed. They find that regime variants—personal dictatorship, military oligarchy, plebiscitary one-party regime, and competitive one-party regime—are associated with distinctive transition dynamics. Whereas transitions from military oligarchies are typically managed from the top down and are relatively orderly, transitions from plebiscitary systems often occur discordantly through confrontational national conferences. A consolidated democracy is least likely to result from the abrupt collapse of a personal dictatorship and is most likely, though never guaranteed, from a graduated transition from a competitive one-party regime. In general, getting to democracy is problematic from all regimes that lack institutional traditions of political competition.

ch. 1. The scientific and ideological legacy of Hobbes -- ch. 2. The basis of Bentham's science of human motion -- ch. 3. Expectation and labour -- ch. 4. Property -- ch. 5. Rules in spontaneous orders and organizations -- ch. 6. "Distributive" justice in the spontaneous order -- ch. 7. The totalitarian trend of democratic institutions -- ch. 8. Panopticon -- ch. 9. Science, spontaneity, and motion in Bentham's system.

"Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers has, in its latest report, given American roads and bridges a grade of D and C+, respectively, and has described roughly sixty-five thousand bridges in the United States as 'structurally deficient.' This crisis--and one need look no further than the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota to see that it is indeed a crisis--shows little sign of abating short of a massive change in attitude amongst politicians and the American public. In The Road Taken, acclaimed historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from historical and contemporary perspectives and explains how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Recounting the long history behind America's highway system, Petroski reveals the genesis of our interstate numbering system (even roads go east-west, odd go north-south), the inspiration behind the center line that has divided roads for decades, and the creation of such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights--all crucial parts of our national and local infrastructure. His history of the rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge reveals the complex and challenging interplay between government and industry inherent in the conception, funding, design, and building of major infrastructure projects, while his forensic analysis of the street he lives on--its potholes, gutters, and curbs--will engage homeowners everywhere. A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity"--

In river deltas, human interference with regional and global socio-ecological systems has led to a plethora of gradual and more abrupt environmental changes that result in inundation, coastal and river bank erosion, land loss and, ultimately, displaced people. Often apolitically framed as protective, state-led transfer of people to new housing grounds, resettlement has become a common response to such displacements. In its process, existing arrangements of land tenure and occupancy and, at times more covertly, related arrangements of capital, labor and the social fabric become dislocated and reassembled. In line with emerging critical geographies of resettlement, this paper conceptualizes resettlement in river deltas against the background of environmental change as a highly political process with far-reaching environmental, economic, social and cultural implications. For this article is based on an in-depth review of both resettlement and political ecology literature, we first elucidate the concept of resettlement before providing a structured overview of categories and recent trends in resettlement literature. We then focus on river deltas that due to multi-scale environmental change are about to become hotspots of future resettlement. Building on identified gaps in resettlement literature, the article concludes with opening up three analytical strands of political ecology as entry points to resettlement studies, understood as critical geographic research into localized manifestations of environmental change in river deltas. Overall, our paper aims to initialize conceptual debate, grounded in a thorough review of recent case study literature on resettlement that is informed by political ecology. The review challenges positivist reductions of resettlement processes as technocratic-managerial tasks that so far have dominated scientific literature in this field and opens up new perspectives for critical research on resettlements in river deltas for human geographers.

What is the ocean's role in human and planetary history? How have writers, sailors, painters, scientists, historians, and philosophers from across time and space poetically envisioned the oceans and depicted human entanglements with the sea? In order to answer these questions, Søren Frank covers an impressive range of material in A Poetic History of the Oceans: Greek, Roman and Biblical texts, an Icelandic Saga, Shakespearean drama, Jens Munk's logbook, 19th century-writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Jonas Lie, and Joseph Conrad as well as their 20th and 21st century-heirs like J. G. Ballard, Jens Bjørneboe, and Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen. A Poetic History of the Oceans promotes what Frank labels an amphibian comparative literature and mobilises recent theoretical concepts and methodological developments in Blue Humanities, Blue Ecology, and New Materialism to shed new light on well-known texts and introduce readers to important, but lesser-known Scandinavian literary engagements with the sea.

Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, Heinrich
Meier, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xxii, 183.One of the debates accompanying the reception of Leo Strauss's
lifework as it grows into an inescapable force in political philosophy has
been this: Where does Strauss really stand on the relation between reason
and revelation? Heinrich Meier's new book ends that debate.

Purpose
Information systems (IS) play an important role in contemporary society, but critical questions remain on their potential use and impact on democracy. This study aims to contribute to the discussion on which technology can be adequate to which major challenge of democratic governance, through the identification and pairing of challenges of democratic governance with specific information technologies with the potential to be used in applications related to this challenge. This perspective can be considered positioned in the confluence between IS, political science and public administration.


Design/methodology/approach
Design science research, a research approach in IS, was used. The suggestion of a conceptual framework with pairs of challenges in democratic governance and information technologies was initially developed. In a subsequent phase, this framework was discussed and assessed through interviews with a panel of selected experts in e-government and IS, reaching a revised conceptual framework.


Findings
Results suggest that the conceptual pairing of challenges in democratic governance with IS's solutions such as artificial intelligence, systems integration or blockchain technologies, for instance, if used in a critical, transparent and accountable way, can play a role in capacitating the delivery of better public services and contribute to encouraging citizen trust and political participation. These results may contribute to open a methodological agenda dedicated to the selection of adequate IS resources to address specific challenges of democratic governance, as well as to help in the development of public policies in the area.


Originality/value
Previous studies on digital government offer important insights on the impact of information and communication technologies-enabled public governance tools for government openness, public service efficiency and user-friendliness, and for citizen political participation and societal mobilization. But the literature still lacks a systematic conceptual framework mapping and assessing the role of distinctive IS instruments in democratic challenge-solving and specifying functional relationships between specific technology and democratic outcomes. This paper aims to contribute to filling this analytical gap.

"In this remarkable and groundbreaking book, Kenan Malik explores the history of moral thought as it has developed over three millennia, from Homer's Greece to Mao's China, from ancient India to modern America. It tells the stories of the great philosophers, and breathes life into their ideas, while also challenging many of our most cherished moral beliefs. Engaging and provocative, The Quest for a Moral Compass confronts some of humanity's deepest questions. Where do values come from? Is God necessary for moral guidance? Are there absolute moral truths? It also brings morality down to earth, showing how, throughout history, social needs and political desires have shaped moral thinking. It is a history of the world told through the history of moral thought, and a history of moral thought that casts new light on global history. At a time of great social turbulence and moral uncertainty, there will be few histories more important than this."

Recent works have compared political participation in a variety of democratic polities. One major finding of some of this research is that to classify individuals as highly active or inactive politically is to oversimplify the notion of participation. Political participation is multidimensional: active participants in one kind of political behaviour may be inactive in another. Preoccupation with one form of participation, such as voting, may obscure the extent and nature of participation taking place. This finding was summarized neatly in a recent work: "Citizens differ not only in the overall amounts of participation they perform but also as to the types of acts in which they choose to engage. Furthermore, these different types of acts are quite distinctive in form and function and can almost be thought of as alternative participatory systems: – systems that are used for different purposes, that are able to provide types of benefits, and that relate the participant to his government and to his fellow citizens in fundamentally different ways." Surprisingly, perhaps, these types of participation have been found to be similar across several democratic polities. Four distinct activities have been located in the several nations: (1) voting; (2) active participation in political campaigns; (3) cooperative activity such as joining with others formally or informally to pursue political goals; and (4) contacting government officials about some public problem. There has been little analysis of the forms of participation of Canadians.

This article contains the main conclusions obtained by the authors of a comparative study of the Canadian experience of regional policy. A PESTEL analysis was carried out to identify common and special features in Canada's regional policy in relation to the northern territories. The final conclusions discussed in the article are of interest for understanding the urgent and future problematic issues of Kazakhstan in regional governance.

Activists cannot build political power simply by framing their message in ways that resonate with broader cultural values. To succeed, framing strategies must be integrated with broader movement-building efforts.