The sexual constitution of political authority: the 'trials' of same sex desire

The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority argues that there are good reasons to suppose that our understandings of state power quiver with erotic undercurrents. Through a series of case studies where a statesman's same sex desire was put on trial (either literally or metaphorically) as a problem for the good exercise of public powers, the book shows the resilience and adaptability of cultural beliefs in the incompatibility between public office and male same-sex desire.

The climate and environment of Byzantine Anatolia: integrating science, history, and archaeology

The integration of high-resolution archaeological, textual, and environmental data with longer-term, low-resolution data affords greater precision in identifying some of the causal relationships underlying societal change. Regional and microregional case studies about the Byzantine world—in particular, Anatolia, which for several centuries was the heart of that world—reveal many of the difficulties that researchers face when attempting to assess the influence of environmental factors on human society. The Anatolian case challenges a number of assumptions about the impact of climatic factors on socio-political organization and medium-term historical evolution, highlighting the importance of further collaboration between historians, archaeologists, and climate scientists.

Toward a view of complementarity trust and policy influence effects of corporate social responsibility and corporate political activity

The extant literature argues that nonmarket strategies can establish, sustain, or enhance a firm’s competitive advantage. Less clear is how and why effective nonmarket strategies influence a firm’s competitiveness. Moreover, the extant literature tends to examine the two building blocks of nonmarket strategy—corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA)—separately. In this article, we extend trust to the nonmarket environment. We analyze how CSR and CPA complement each other to create strong trust between firms and the polity, and how they consequently influence government policy. We show the mediating role of trust in policy influence, and argue that CSR and CPA should be aligned for the successful influence of salient government policy.

The new localism, anti-political development machines, and the role of planning consultants: lessons from London's South Bank

This paper draws on a study of the politics of development planning in London’s South Bank to examine wider trends in the governance of contemporary cities. It assesses the impacts and outcomes of so-called new localist reforms and argues that we are witnessing two principal trends. First, governance processes are increasingly dominated by anti-democratic development machines, characterized by new assemblages of public- and private-sector experts. These machines reflect and reproduce a type of development politics in which there is a greater emphasis on a pragmatic realism and a politics of delivery. Second, the presence of these machines is having a significant impact on the politics of planning. Democratic engagement is not seen as the basis for new forms of localism and community control. Instead, it is presented as a potentially disruptive force that needs to be managed by a new breed of skilled private-sector consultant. The paper examines these wider shifts in urban politics before focusing on the connections between emerging development machines and local residential and business communities. It ends by highlighting some of the wider implications of change for democratic modes of engagement and nodes of resistance in urban politics.

The Italian academies 1525-1700: networks of culture, innovation and dissent

The intellectual societies known as Academies played a vital role in the development of culture, and scholarly debate throughout Italy between 1525-1700. They were fundamental in establishing the intellectual networks later defined as the ‘République des Lettres’, and in the dissemination of ideas in early modern Europe, through print, manuscript, oral debate and performance. This volume surveys the social and cultural role of Academies, challenging received ideas and incorporating recent archival findings on individuals, networks and texts. Ranging over Academies in both major and smaller or peripheral centres, these collected studies explore the interrelationships of Academies with other cultural forums. Individual essays examine the fluid nature of academies and their changing relationships to the political authorities; their role in the promotion of literature, the visual arts and theatre; and the diverse membership recorded for many academies, which included scientists, writers, printers, artists, political and religious thinkers, and, unusually, a number of talented women. Contributions by established international scholars together with studies by younger scholars active in this developing field of research map out new perspectives on the dynamic place of the Academies in early modern Italy. The publication results from the research collaboration ‘The Italian Academies 1525-1700: the first intellectual networks of early modern Europe’ funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is edited by the senior investigators.

Translation practices in political institutions: a comparison of national, supranational, and non-governmental organisations

This paper explores the settings and practices of translation at three types of political institutions, i.e. national, supranational, and non-governmental organisations. The three institutions are the translation service of the German Foreign Office, the translation department of the European Central Bank, and translation provision by the non-governmental organisation Amnesty International. The three case studies describe the specific translation practices in place at these institutions and illustrate some characteristic translation strategies. In this way, we reflect on how different translation practices can impact on translation agency and how these practices in turn are influenced by the type of institution and its organisational structure. The article also aims to explore to which extent the characteristics of collectivity, anonymity and standardisation, and of institutional translation as self-translation are applicable to the institutions under discussion.

No country for honest men: political philosophers and real politics

There are limits on the duty to tell the truth. Sometimes, because of the undesirable consequences of honesty, we are morally required not to reveal certain truths and can even be required to lie. In this article, we explore the implications of this uncontroversial claim for the practice of political philosophers. We argue that, given the consequences of misunderstandings and misrepresentations that might occur, political philosophers will sometimes be under a moral duty not to disseminate their research and, in highly exceptional cases, have a moral duty to lie outright.

Introduction: the legacy of Greek political thought

This Introduction offers context for the individual papers by examining the intersections and productive tensions between political thought and classical reception studies. While Plato and Aristotle have long been privileged interlocutors for political philosophers, classical reception studies has pluralised both this ancient canon and given rise to a more complex understanding of the modern heirs of ancient political thought. Similarly, the insights of studying the history of political texts and ideas across a longer tradition calls into question the fixity of concepts such as democracy, empire and political freedom. Indeed, we query the very notion of tradition by emphasising how the past has been repeatedly constructed and reconstructed in divergent modern political discourses and conversely how modern political theories and realities have been shaped and reshaped by an idea of antiquity. The Introduction closes with a brief survey of the collected papers.

Big social data and political sentiment: the tweet stream during the UK General Election 2015 campaign

The General Election for the 56th United Kingdom Parliament was held on 7 May 2015. Tweets related to UK politics, not only those with the specific hashtag ”#GE2015”, have been collected in the period between March 1 and May 31, 2015. The resulting dataset contains over 28 million tweets for a total of 118 GB in uncompressed format or 15 GB in compressed format. This study describes the method that was used to collect the tweets and presents some analysis, including a political sentiment index, and outlines interesting research directions on Big Social Data based on Twitter microblogging.

The Golden Age returns: Virgil's fourth Eclogue in the political panegyric of the Italian courts

E. H. Gombrich and others have analysed the uses made of language and imagery from Virgil's famous fourth Eclogue in panegyrical writing by partisans of the Medici dynasty in Florence. This study examines the appropriation of the theme of the returning Golden Age and related motifs from the fourth Eclogue in other Italian courts during the same period, by supporters of the Visconti and Sforza of Milan, the Gonzaga of Mantua, Leonello d'Este and his successors in Ferrara, and the Bentivoglio of Bologna, among others. The deployment of this Virgilian material in political panegyric is seen to be a central element in the self-definition and self-promotion of dynastic rulers throughout the peninsula.