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1
Laspina, Iván. Quito, ciudad y pobreza. Quito, Ecuador: Municipio del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito, Dirección General de Planificación, 1995.
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2
Grewal, J. S. ‘Divide and Quit’. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199467099.003.0014.
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The British Prime Minister’s statement of 20 February 1947 carried the implication of partition with independence by June 1948. Nehru welcomed the statement as ‘wise and courageous’ and the Congress Working Committee welcomed the declaration, adding that Sikh interests would be safeguarded. Master Tara Singh declared that there could be no settlement if the Muslims wanted to rule over the Punjab. Lord Mountbatten was prepared to work out a settlement on the basis of partition. In his meeting with the Governor General and the representatives of the Congress and the Muslim League on 2 June, Baldev Singh accepted partition in principle, suggesting exchange of population and property as the terms of reference for the Boundary Commission. Mountbatten made it clear at a press conference later that the Labour Government would never subscribe to partition on the basis of landed property. Thus, population became virtually the sole criterion for partition.
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Gagliano, Marco da. Madrigals, Part 5. Edited by Edmond Strainchamps. A-R Editions, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.31022/b222.
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Marco da Gagliano's Quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci was published in October 1608, a little less than two years after his previous book. It contains fourteen madrigals for five voices and one for seven, all composed by Gagliano. The poets represented include Giambattista Marino, Giovanbattista Strozzi, both the older and the younger, Cosimo Galletti, and Ottavio Rinuccini. The madrigals of book 5 are quite varied in their style and their treatment of text. Many are light and remarkably concise, like the canzonetta-influenced madrigals of the Quarto libro, and most often set text syllabically to shorter rhythmic values in motives that alternate between homophony (or near homophony) and polyphony, imitative or nonimitative. Some, however, set poetry very differently. A three-part setting of a Marino sonnet, for instance, is filled with virtuoso melisma, probably intended for the professional singers of the Medici court. Book 5 also includes a concertato madrigal for seven singers and basso continuo that bears the prescriptive direction “per cantare e sonare” (for voices and instruments) in the basso partbook. Although there is no notational indication of instruments, the basso part lacks text for several measures, and it is likely that it was performed with improvised chords on an instrument. The book also contains two threnodies for Count Cammillo della Gheradesca that are in a somber and more traditional polyphony and contrast with the rest of the book's contents.
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Bratman, Michael E. Consistency and Coherence in Plan. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190867850.003.0009.
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This essay focuses on the reflections of a planning agent on her distinctive synchronic norms of practical thinking. It develops the idea of planning agency that is self-reinforcing by way of considerations of self-governance: given that one is a planning agent whose practical thinking is guided by basic planning norms—something for which there is good reason—one’s self-governance will be such that conforming to those norms is partly constitutive of that self-governance. This helps articulate a framework within which (a) pragmatic grounds for planning agency quite generally, combine with (b) normative reasons of self-governance for conformity to basic norms in the particular case. This framework can be brought to bear by a reflective planning agent in support of basic norms of synchronic plan rationality. And this supports an interpretation of the idea that these norms are peremptory.
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Baranowski, Maciej. Sociophonetics. Edited by Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199744084.013.0020.
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The term sociophonetics refers to the interface of sociolinguistics and phonetics, and specifically to the use of modern phonetic methods in the quantitative analysis of language variation and change. Although its definition can be quite broad, including any sociolinguistic study involving sounds analysed impressionistically, it usually implies the use of instrumental techniques. This chapter takes the view of sociophonetics as a tool contributing to the understanding of the nature of language variation and change. Assuming a basic knowledge of acoustic phonetics, it focuses on sociophonetic methodology, particularly in the practice of acoustic vowel analysis.
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Stewart, Frances, Gustav Ranis, and Emma Samman. The Evolution of Development Thought. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794455.003.0001.
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This chapter reviews the evolution of development thought from the Second World War to date, tracing the dynamics and interactions between the circumstances that countries faced, economic thought, and policies. It shows that on gaining independence, countries first aimed to promote economic growth, and while this was quite successful, problems emerged and the human dimension was neglected. A succession of alternatives, including the basic needs approach, was displaced by the debt crisis and stabilization in the 1980s, with very harsh consequences for poverty. The human development approach arose then, with the 1990 Human Development Report, building on basic needs and Sen’s capabilities approach. The chapter traces subsequent developments, including global agreements such as the Millennium Development Goals, and subsequently the Sustainable Development Goals, which can be seen as embodiments of the human development approach.
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Mozersky, M. Joshua. Presentism. Edited by Craig Callender. Oxford University Press, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199298204.003.0006.
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Is there more to the world than the present moment? This question is one of the most basic one can ask about time. This chapter discusses presentism: the doctrine that everything is present—that, and only that, which is present exists—reviewing a quite different attack on presentism. Called the “truth-maker” or “grounding” objection, the idea is that the presentist's temporally impoverished resources are insufficient to allow him or her to say that statements about the past or future are truth-evaluable. So the presentist faces a quandary: the claim is true, yet there is nothing that makes it so.
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Levine, Joseph. The Modal Status of Materialism. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198800088.003.0008.
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It is quite common to assume that Materialism, if true, is only contingently true. After all, couldn’t there have been a dualist world of immaterial souls, even if this world doesn’t happen to be one? We argue that, contrary to appearances, Materialism, if true, is necessarily true. In the course of making this argument we clarify what we take to be the core of the Materialist thesis, which differs crucially from the way it’s often presented. Rather than a specification of the nature of the material that underlies mentality, it is more a claim that mental states are realized, not basic.
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Escudier, Marcel. Engineering applications of the linear momentum equation. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198719878.003.0010.
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In this chapter a method is shown for applying the linear momentum equation, together with the continuity equation and either Bernoulli’s equation or some other information about static pressure, to the analysis of a diverse range of practical problems. A key aim is to demonstrate that it is possible to establish a relatively simple theoretical basis which can give quite accurate and useful information about the performance of such complex machines as jet and rocket engines, the jet pump, and the Pelton turbine. Other examples include flow through a sudden enlargement, a convergent nozzle, a pipe bend, a pipe junction, and a cascade of guidevanes. For each example it is shown how to define a suitable control volume.
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Skantze, P. A. Gloriously Inept and Satisfyingly True. Edited by Mark Franko. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199314201.013.41.
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Invoking the methodology of the act of spectating as a practice, an idea developed from Skantze’s Itinerant Spectator/Itinerant Spectacle, this chapter examines reenactment from the perspective of the active spectator. The archive and the document common to reenactment present the spectator as practitioner with interpretive tools, and yet often the reception of reenactments becomes stronger by way of the mix of spectator memory with the not quite accurate or faithful in the representation. Wim Vandekeybus’s Booty Looting, a dance performance that not only stages a reenactment, but also confronts the spectator with the material of memory, forms the basis for thinking through the paradox of the truth in approximations and flawed enactments.
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Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. The Problem. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199586011.003.0001.
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Most conventional conceptions of what democracy is and of how it should be organized imply particular characteristics and functions for parties and party systems, and particular kinds of relationships among parties, citizens, and the state. Our contention is that the party government model so conceived, while quite powerful prescriptively, has only a marginal connection to the way parties and party system really work in the early twenty-first century. Our basic argument is that at the level of party systems, the mainstream parties, and most minor parties as well, have effectively formed a cartel. While the appearance of competition is preserved, in terms of political substance it has become spectacle—a show for the audience of audience democracy.
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William A, Schabas. Part 4 Composition and Administration of the Court: Composition et Administration de la Cour, Art.36 Qualifications, nomination, and election of judges/Qualifications, candidature et élection des juges. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/law/9780198739777.003.0041.
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This chapter comments on Article 36 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article 36 provides an elaborate list of criteria for selection of judges, aimed at ensuring competence in criminal trial procedure and public international law as well as geographic and gender balance. The Assembly of States Parties has devised a complicated election process in order to ensure that these goals are actually achieved. Specifically, the article sets out the number of judges, the basic qualifications of judges, election procedure, and terms of office. It is also one of the longest provisions in the Rome Statute, comprising ten paragraphs, some of them quite detailed, and more than 1,100 words.
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Brunsson, Nils. The Standardization of Organizational Forms as a Cropping‐up Process. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198296706.003.0006.
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A key argument in institutional theories of organization is that organizational forms are strongly influenced by widely held norms and ideas about the kind of organizational forms that are natural, correct, or desirable. Norms and ideas held in common constitute a major impetus to standardization; they promote similarities in many organizations, even those which conduct quite different types of production but which operate within the same culture or the same field. This chapter presents a ‘cropping-up’ model of standardization. It discusses the basic concepts underlying a ‘cropping-up’ model: forms, reforms, and organizational discourse. It describes how organizational forms are determined by the interaction between general discourse and local reform cycles. Finally, it the way in which local reforms may affect the norms expressed in the general discourse.
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Mark, Tushnet. 1 The United States: Eclecticism in the Service of Pragmatism. Oxford University Press, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226474.003.0002.
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The traditions of constitutional interpretation in the United States make it possible, and indeed relatively easy, to use interpretation as the vehicle for constitutional adaptation. The distinction between interpretation and alteration is accordingly quite thin. The interpretive traditions are decidedly eclectic. Interpretation relies on the words of the text as understood when they were made part of the constitution, general propositions about how institutional arrangements promote constitutionalism, ideas about the values of democracy and individual autonomy, and much more. This chapter looks at the U.S. constitution, its origins and structure, formation, and basis, as well as the legislature and the executive, the Supreme Court, constitutional amendment, problems and methods of constitutional interpretation, early examples of constitutional interpretation, considerations of administrability, (moderately) disfavoured interpretive methods, presumptive interpretation, preferred interpretive techniques, and eclecticism in practice.
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Graves, Tracey. Neurogenetic disease. Edited by Patrick Davey and David Sprigings. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199568741.003.0223.
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There are many genetic diseases which affect the nervous system. Although some of these are extremely rare, several are quite common and, as a group, they comprise a significant proportion of neurological disease. Almost all clinical neurological syndromes can have a genetic cause. Not all of these have been genetically elucidated, but some have been extensively characterized in terms of clinical phenotype, molecular genetics, and cellular pathophysiology. Given the improvement in laboratory techniques and subsequent reduction in the cost of direct DNA sequencing, there is likely to be a rapid expansion over the next decade in the identification of causative genes and hence the availability of genetic tests. Thus, all clinicians should have a basic understanding about genetic disease; inheritance patterns; availability of genetic tests; genetic counselling; and ethics. Particular subspeciality areas where neurogenetic disease is common include neuromuscular disease and movement disorders.
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Manuel, Peter. Chowtal and the Dantāl. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252038815.003.0003.
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This chapter discusses two distinct traditional entities in Indo-Caribbean music culture—the antiphonal folksong genre called chowtal and the dantāl, a common metallophone—which have flourished in the diaspora. In fact, they have become considerably more widespread, on a per capita basis, than their counterparts in North India. In the process, they illustrate how the neotraditional stratum of the international Bhojpuri diaspora—including both the Caribbean and Fiji—can constitute an entity that shares features that, despite being of traditional Indian origin, nevertheless are distinct from the Bhojpuri ancestral culture. These phenomena illustrate how, in this sense, neotraditional Bhojpuri diasporic music culture is best seen not as a microcosm of its nineteenth-century Bhojpuri-region ancestor, but as an entity with its own distinctive features, in which inherited features may assume trajectories quite distinct from their North Indian counterparts.
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Andeweg, Rudy B., and Kees Aarts. Studying Political Legitimacy. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198793717.003.0011.
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This final chapter concludes with a reflection on the findings presented in the book, the implications of these findings for politics and political science, and suggestions for a new research agenda on legitimacy. The chapter concludes that the analyses in this volume do not provide evidence of legitimacy crisis. This leaves us with a puzzle, as the belief in such a legitimacy crisis is persistent, and it has proven to be quite resistant to evidence provided by political scientists on the basis of data such as analyzed in this book. This discrepancy between current data and public discourse must also prompt us to reflect on political science research: what have we done so far in selecting our concepts, data, research strategies, and empirical domain, and what can and should be improved? The chapter concludes with suggestions for new research on legitimacy.
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Canfield, Donald Eugene. What Controls Atmospheric Oxygen Concentrations? Princeton University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691145020.003.0005.
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This chapter deals with the fundamental question of why there is oxygen in the atmosphere at all. It seeks to identify the main processes controlling the oxygen concentration. Plants and cyanobacteria produce the oxygen, but it accumulates only because some of the original photosynthetically produced organic matter is buried and preserved in sediments. Another oxygen source is an anaerobic microbial process called sulfate reduction that respires organic matter using sulfate and produces sulfide. This process is quite common in nature but are most prominent in relatively isolated basins like the Black Sea, and in most marine sediments at depths where oxygen has been consumed by respiration. If there is iron around, the sulfide reacts with the iron, forming a mineral called pyrite. While organic carbon burial has been the main oxygen source to the atmosphere over the past several hundred million years, for some intervals further back in time, pyrite burial may well have dominated as an oxygen source.
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Nitschke, Peter, ed. Gemeinsame Werte in Europa? Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783845291628.
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The essays collected in this book are the results of an international and interdisciplinary conference which addressed the topic of shared perspectives in common values and which focused on an obviously very difficult question: Bearing different mechanisms, such as financial transfers and the logic of institutions, in mind, what is the basic cultural link in the values of European integration? The tremors and disintegrative effects the EU has been experiencing for quite some time are not least the result of a shift in its perspective that the idea of the common values of a European society being able to act as a civilising force is either a) non-existent or b) underdeveloped in many of its Member States, or c) has even been strongly rejected by some of them. With contributions by Meral Avci, Hermann-Josef Blanke, Sebastian Raphael Bunse, Ladislav Cabada, Michael Gehler, Barbara Henry, Peter Nitschke.
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Soderstrom, Nicholas C., Carole L. Yue, and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork. Metamemory and Education. Edited by John Dunlosky and Sarah (Uma) K. Tauber. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199336746.013.6.
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Metamemory refers to one’s knowledge and understanding of how learning and memory operate, as well as the interplay between the monitoring and controlling of one’s own memory and learning. This chapter reviews and evaluates the current state of metamemory research—basic, applied, and survey—with respect to its educational implications. Among the relevant aspects of metamemory discussed are the growing number of findings that, although people’s beliefs and ongoing assessments of their own learning can be sometimes quite accurate, they can also be very much at odds with their actual learning and create illusions of competence that can lead to the adoption of ineffective learning strategies. The chapter gives special consideration to procedures that might help foster metamemorial sophistication, with the goal of optimizing self-regulated learning. It concludes with some general remarks regarding the educational implications of metamemory research and offers some promising directions for future research.
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Richardson, Henry. Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190247744.003.0001.
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The book’s primary aim is to set out an account of how the moral community—the community of all persons—can fill in gaps in morality that result from indeterminacies in objective morality by authoritatively adopting new moral norms. “Morality” is here taken to refer to the norms binding on all persons, making no distinctions purely on the basis of person’s particular identities (as distinct from their features). Reducing indeterminacies in morality stands as a potential source of moral progress—one quite distinct from that of reducing our moral ignorance. Moral indeterminacy can arise in relation to wholly novel moral questions or clashes of incommensurable moral considerations. Illustrative possible cases of newly introduced moral norms are given. For the moral community to exercise moral authority, it must find its voice. The book’s three-stage account of that process is previewed, as are the individual chapters.
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Castro, Claudio de Moura. The Development of Brazilian Education. Edited by Edmund Amann, Carlos R. Azzoni, and Werner Baer. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190499983.013.25.
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This chapter examines the evolution of education in Brazil over the long term. It is established that historical circumstances allied to successive policy failures help account for Brazil’s disappointing performance in the educational field in international comparative terms. In 1920, the system covered 9% of school-age children, 26% by 1950 and, more recently, 98% of 6–14-year-old children have been covered. The acceleration in growth, particularly since the 1950s, has been an impressive achievement. The latest records indicate that 71% of the relevant age cohort finishes basic education. Secondary education is completed by 51%. Compared to the past, this is quite an achievement. Compared to world or even Latin American standards, these results are mediocre at best. The available tests indicate weak performance. The chapter highlights the kinds of issues that will need to be addressed if this situation is to be tackled adequately.
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Venner, Anne, and Patrick M. Fuller. An overview of sleep–wake circuitry. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198778240.003.0005.
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How and when we wake and sleep are under the control of incredibly complex neural circuitry, consisting of neuronal populations (or nodes), neurotransmitters, and pathways that form orchestrated wake- or sleep-promoting networks. When any aspect of this neural circuitry is impaired (e.g. disease) or altered by external factors (e.g. stress), sleep and wake can be disrupted, sometimes quite profoundly. As one example, selective loss of orexin neurons in the lateral hypothalamus results in the sleep disorder narcolepsy. While our understanding of how discrete circuit elements in the brain work together to regulate wake and sleep remains incomplete, the relatively recent development of genetically driven tools and techniques has enabled a far more detailed understanding of the functional and structural basis of this circuitry. In this chapter, we review the current state of our understanding of the brain circuitry regulating sleep and wake, including how disruption of discrete circuit elements underlies a myriad of sleep- and wake-disorders.
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Buesching, Christina D., and Theodore Stankowich. Communication amongst the musteloids: signs, signals, and cues. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198759805.003.0005.
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Most intentional communication is intra-specific and benefits both sender and receiver. Typically, the more complex a species’ social system, the more complex is its communication. Because only ca. 10% of musteloid species are truly social, their communication is generally quite basic, while their solitary, nocturnal lifestyle is reflected in a predominance of olfactory signals. This chapter first discusses the properties of different signal modalities (visual, acoustic, olfactory and tactile), and then provides a review of musteloid communication in the context of signal functionality, starting with a section on defensive signals (warning-, alarm-, and distress signals), proceeding to other modes of inter-specific communication, such as eavesdropping on predator cues by smaller prey species (odours increasingly applied in conservation management), before moving on to more specialised intra-specific communication. It discusses resource defence and territorial marking, before concluding with a section on individual advertisement, including recognition of individuals and group-membership, and fitness advertisement.
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Ophir, Adi, and Ishay Rosen-Zvi. Fragile Particularism, Virtual Universalism. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198744900.003.0003.
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Chapter 2 reconstructs the earliest efforts to stabilize binary relations between Israel and its many others in two quite different groups of late biblical sources—Ezra-Nehemiah and the eschatological prophecies. A real transformation of that triangular structure took place in two very different, but more or less contemporaneous, genres of writing. Ezra-Nehemiah shows clear efforts to generalize otherness and abstract it from the particularities of different nations. Conversely, the universalist vision of the later prophets stops short of eliminating Israel’s basic separateness. But despite their genuine inclusivity, these texts share the main outline of the triangular structure of relations between Israel, its others, and a third, mediating figure introduced most clearly in Ezra-Nehemiah. This group of texts plays a crucial role in our genealogy: they introduce a novel interest in alterity, though they fail to conceptualize it, a failure attested by a series of visible (i.e., legible) rhetorical performative moves.
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Gucci, Riccardo, and Claudio Cantini. Pruning and Training Systems for Modern Olive Growing. CSIRO Publishing, 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/9780643101302.
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Olive growing is expanding rapidly in many countries around the world in which olives have not previously been widely cultivated. Pruning olive trees is quite different from pruning other fruit trees of the temperate zone, because of their biological peculiarities. Errors in pruning may result in yield losses or higher cultivation costs. Pruning also determines the training system which, in turn, is one of the major factors for successful tree performance and orchard profitability.
Pruning and Training Systems for Modern Olive Growing summarises the information available on current pruning techniques and training systems. It specifically addresses the problems faced by growers, professionals and students who are new to olive growing and provides information previously not available in English.
The fundamental aim of this book is to explain the basic concepts at a practical level. It will allow the reader, whether experienced horticulturalist or beginner, to develop his or her own skills and pruning strategy.
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Churchland, Patricia Smith. The Impact of Social Neuroscience on Moral Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190460723.003.0002.
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Part I begins with Patricia Churchland exploring the impact of social neuroscience on moral philosophy. She argues that the basic platform for morality is attachment and bonding, and the caring behavior motivated by such attachment—and that oxytocin, a neurohormone, is at the hub of attachment behavior in social mammals and probably birds. Not acting alone, oxytocin works with other hormones and neurotransmitters and circuitry adaptations. Among its many roles, oxytocin decreases the stress response, making possible the trusting and cooperative interactions typical of life in social mammals. Churchland also argues that learning local social practices depends on the reward system because in social animals approval brings pleasure and disapproval brings pain. Subcortical structures, she argues, are the key to acquiring social values, and quite a lot is known about how the reward system works. Acquiring social skills also involves generalizing from samples, so that learned exemplars can be applied to new circumstances.
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Hammer, Olav. Religious Experiences in New Religious Movements. Edited by James R. Lewis and Inga Tøllefsen. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190466176.013.26.
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Among the basic elements found in older and more recent religions alike are striking experiences such as visions, out-of-body experiences, and mystical union. On the one hand, such experiences as psychological phenomena. On the other, they are also social facts; something as intangible as a personal experience is somehow transformed into the bedrock of a religious movement. The present chapter argues that the “religious” element of an experience is an effect of the way these experiences are categorized and interpreted. Quite a few people have had striking experiences, far fewer insist that their experiences have any validity for others, and fewer yet manage to convince other people of the supernatural origin and of these experiences and derive authority from them. A new religious movement will derive legitimacy from such experiences if they are presented in a narrative that frames them as “religious,” and if others are willing to accept this narrative.
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Martin, Graham R. Vision. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199694532.003.0002.
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Vision is the primary source of information about the environments in which birds live. But vision is not ‘all-seeing’; it is subject to many constraints, trade-offs, and compromises. Furthermore, the basic components of eyes (optics, image analysing systems, and eye positions) have been subject to intense and persistent natural selection which has resulted in eyes whose capacities are tuned in many and subtle ways to the perceptual challenges posed by life in different environments. Colour vision, spatial resolution, contrast sensitivity, absolute sensitivity, and visual fields all differ markedly between species. Even two birds with eyes that appear very similar may have quite different bird’s eye views, and all birds have a different world view from our own. Knowledge of these differences is vital for understanding the behaviours of birds. While vision provides key information only rarely is it sufficient to guide behaviour, information from other senses must come into play.
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Szukala, Andrea, and Tonio Oeftering, eds. Protest und Partizipation. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783845296357.
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In democracy, political participation is seen as the most important way for citizens to communicate information to political decision-makers (Sydney Verba) and the bureaucracy affiliated to them. Protest plays a special role here among the political and cultural varieties of participation, since it can be seen as a symptom of democratic defects or as an expression of a living, transformative democracy. Civic education situates itself in relation to this particular form of expression of political culture in a multidimensional way: it transmits basic democratic values to educational institutions and marks the boundaries of accepted practice of protest quite differently. This can also result in a transformative practice of protest (Banks), which is also discussed in this volume. In it, the authors resurvey the field of political education according to the conditions of the current crisis-ridden transformation in democracy. This anthology was created to document the 2017 Münster Conference of the DVPW-Committee on Political Science and Civic Education.
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Lebow, Richard Ned, and Feng Zhang. Justice and International Order. Oxford University Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197598399.001.0001.
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Justice and International Order: East and West compares Western and Chinese conceptions of justice, ancient and modern. The book argues that most conceptions can be reduced to the principles of fairness and equality, although they are developed and expressed quite differently in the two cultures. In the modern era there has been a noticeable shift in both cultures in giving equality priority over fairness. In ancient and modern times there is greater variation regarding justice within each culture than there is between them. This overlap, and arguably in some ways convergence, provides the basis for restructuring Sino-American relations along lines that could prove acceptable to leaders and peoples of both countries. The book extends its argument to international order and asks how it could be made more effective and consensual. Building on our principles of justice, it identifies some of the pathways that would lead to a more peaceful world, one in which the weak and poor as well as the rich and powerful would feel included and rewarded.
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Carroll, Jayne, Andrew Reynolds, and Barbara Yorke, eds. Power and Place in Europe in the Early Middle Ages. British Academy, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197266588.001.0001.
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This volume brings together a series of case studies of spatial configurations of power among the early medieval societies of Europe. The geographical range extends from Ireland to Kosovo and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean world and brings together quite different scholarly traditions in a focused enquiry into the character of places of power from the end of the Roman period into the central Middle Ages. The book's strength lies in the basis that it provides for a comparative analysis of the formation, function and range of power relations in early medieval societies. The editors' introductory chapter provides an extended scene setting review of the current state of knowledge in the field of early medieval social complexity and sets out an agenda for future work in this topical area. The regional and local case studies found in the volume, most of them interdisciplinary, showcase detailed studies of particular situations at a range of scales. While much previous work tends to focus on comparisons with the classical world, this volume emphasises the uniqueness of early medieval modes of social organisation and the need to assess these societies on their own terms.
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Brink, Johann, and Todd Tomita. Psychotic disorders. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199360574.003.0033.
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The presentation of psychotic disorders in jails and prisons can be quite complex and diverse. In addition to the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, there are the many disorders of unclear etiology or secondary to the neurotoxic effects of substance abuse. In parallel, the provision of empirically informed care for incarcerated offenders with psychotic disorders presents significant clinical, security, and administrative challenges. However, strong scientific evidence exists that a configuration of interventions offers substantial benefit in the treatment of incarcerated individuals with psychotic disorders. Such a configuration incorporates both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. Specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy, designed and presented within a risk-needs-recovery (R-N-R) framework, when combined with appropriate pharmacological interventions, has strong empirical support as best practice in the treatment of severe mental illness in the correctional population. Further, specific issues related to care coordination, treatment engagement and adherence, implementation of best practice, and treatment fidelity each contribute to resulting symptom reduction and functional improvement. Careful attention to reducing the risks of inappropriate polypharmacy through clinician feedback and practice monitoring is another critical element. This chapter discusses the evidence basis for appropriate treatment of the psychotic disorders and the range of opportunities for both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology in correctional settings.
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Brink, Johann, and Todd Tomita. Psychotic disorders. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199360574.003.0033_update_001.
Full textAbstract:
The presentation of psychotic disorders in jails and prisons can be quite complex and diverse. In addition to the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, there are the many disorders of unclear etiology or secondary to the neurotoxic effects of substance abuse. In parallel, the provision of empirically informed care for incarcerated offenders with psychotic disorders presents significant clinical, security, and administrative challenges. However, strong scientific evidence exists that a configuration of interventions offers substantial benefit in the treatment of incarcerated individuals with psychotic disorders. Such a configuration incorporates both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. Specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy, designed and presented within a risk-needs-recovery (R-N-R) framework, when combined with appropriate pharmacological interventions, has strong empirical support as best practice in the treatment of severe mental illness in the correctional population. Further, specific issues related to care coordination, treatment engagement and adherence, implementation of best practice, and treatment fidelity each contribute to resulting symptom reduction and functional improvement. Careful attention to reducing the risks of inappropriate polypharmacy through clinician feedback and practice monitoring is another critical element. This chapter discusses the evidence basis for appropriate treatment of the psychotic disorders and the range of opportunities for both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology in correctional settings.
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Sinclair, Mark. Being Inclined. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198844587.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
This is the first book-length study in English of the work of Félix Ravaisson, France’s most influential philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book shows how in his 1838 Of Habit, Ravaisson understands habit as tendency and inclination in a way that provides the basis for a philosophy of nature and a general metaphysics. In examining Ravaisson’s ideas against the background of the history of philosophy, and in the light of later developments in French thought, the book shows how Ravaisson accounts for the nature of habit as inclination in an original manner, and within a metaphysical framework quite different from those of his predecessors in the philosophical tradition. The book sheds new light on the history of modern French philosophy, and argues for the importance of the neglected nineteenth-century French spiritualist tradition. It also shows that Ravaisson’s philosophy of inclination, of being inclined, is of great import for contemporary philosophy, and particularly for the contemporary metaphysics of powers, given that ideas about tendency have recently come to prominence in discussions concerning dispositions, laws, and the nature of causation. The book offers a detailed and faithful contextualist study of Ravaisson’s short masterpiece, but it does so in demonstrating its importance for contemporary thought.
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Behera, Swadhin, and Toshio Yamagata. Climate Dynamics of ENSO Modoki Phenomena. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.612.
Full textAbstract:
The El Niño Modoki/La Niña Modoki (ENSO Modoki) is a newly acknowledged face of ocean-atmosphere coupled variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The oceanic and atmospheric conditions associated with the El Niño Modoki are different from that of canonical El Niño, which is extensively studied for its dynamics and worldwide impacts. A typical El Niño event is marked by a warm anomaly of sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial eastern Pacific. Because of the associated changes in the surface winds and the weakening of coastal upwelling, the coasts of South America suffer from widespread fish mortality during the event. Quite opposite of this characteristic change in the ocean condition, cold SST anomalies prevail in the eastern equatorial Pacific during the El Niño Modoki events, but with the warm anomalies intensified in the central Pacific. The boreal winter condition of 2004 is a typical example of such an event, when a tripole pattern is noticed in the SST anomalies; warm central Pacific flanked by cold eastern and western regions. The SST anomalies are coupled to a double cell in anomalous Walker circulation with rising motion in the central parts and sinking motion on both sides of the basin. This is again a different feature compared to the well-known single-cell anomalous Walker circulation during El Niños. La Niña Modoki is the opposite phase of the El Niño Modoki, when a cold central Pacific is flanked by warm anomalies on both sides.The Modoki events are seen to peak in both boreal summer and winter and hence are not seasonally phase-locked to a single seasonal cycle like El Niño/La Niña events. Because of this distinction in the seasonality, the teleconnection arising from these events will vary between the seasons as teleconnection path will vary depending on the prevailing seasonal mean conditions in the atmosphere. Moreover, the Modoki El Niño/La Niña impacts over regions such as the western coast of the United States, the Far East including Japan, Australia, and southern Africa, etc., are opposite to those of the canonical El Niño/La Niña. For example, the western coasts of the United States suffer from severe droughts during El Niño Modoki, whereas those regions are quite wet during El Niño. The influences of Modoki events are also seen in tropical cyclogenesis, stratosphere warming of the Southern Hemisphere, ocean primary productivity, river discharges, sea level variations, etc. A remarkable feature associated with Modoki events is the decadal flattening of the equatorial thermocline and weakening of zonal thermal gradient. The associated ocean-atmosphere conditions have caused frequent and persistent developments of Modoki events in recent decades.
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Dorival, Gilles. The Septuagint from Alexandria to Constantinople. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898098.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
The Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria by Jewish scholars in the third century BCE. The other Biblical books followed, almost always in Alexandria. Then, the so-called Septuagint became the Old Testament of the New Testament. Afterwards, it was the Christian Bible of the first millenium in almost all of the Mediterranean Basin. The Septuagint was the Bible of the Byzantine Biblical compilations, made of patristic extracts, the catenae, a literary form which prevailed in Constantinople and its dependancies between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries. The first topic concerns the Biblical Jewish canon. What informations does the Septuagint provide about it? What is the significance of the books and passages specific to the Greek Bible? The second issue is about the New Testament: what is its Old Testament? As a rule, it is the Septuagint, but this assertion must be qualified. And, through the centuries, was there a Christianization of the text of the Septuagint? Actually, it was quite limited. The third issue concerns the Old Testament of the Church Fathers: what was their Bible? It was the Septuagint, in Greek or in a language translated from Greek, except in the Syriac area as well as in the Latin area after the sixth century, where Jerome’s Vulgate translated from Hebrew prevailed. That Greek Bible played a much more important role in the building of the Christian identity than is usually recognized. The last topic is about the catenae. What are they and what is their importance? And how do these compilations witness to the text of the Septuagint? So, the first millenium Old Testament was the Septuagint, even if this assertion has to be qualified.
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Balsiger, Jörg, and Stacy D. VanDeveer. Regional Governance and Environmental Problems. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.416.
Full textAbstract:
Only recently has international environmental politics scholarship focused more explicitly on “regionalism” as a distinct phenomenon, one which has received much more sustained attention among specialists in international security and international political economy. By the early twenty-first century, regional environmental governance had become commonplace. Since the term “region” has had different connotations in different disciplines, the analytic and empirical scope of studies of regional environmental governance has varied considerably. As such, analyses of regional environmental cooperation have incorporated both constructivist views of regions that transcend the nation-state grid, and rescaling arguments placing greater emphasis on subnational governments, transboundary mobilization, and the importance of ecoregional initiatives. Regional agreements increasingly point to some sort of ecoterritoriality, state actors are increasingly complemented by nonstate or substate actors, and the thematic scope increasingly expands beyond purely environmental issues to encompass broader notions of sustainable development. There are three typical types of regional agreements: interstate regional environmental governance, ecoregional environmental governance, and ecoregional sustainable development governance. Interstate regional environmental governance is most typical of regional economic organizations with an environmental mandate that covers single or multiple environmental issues. Meanwhile, ecoregional environmental governance is widely seen in agreements for mountain ranges, regional seas, or river basins. Case studies on marine and mountain regional environmental governance illustrate that various regional arrangement remain in quite different states of institutionalization. Yet they also illustrate the growth of ecoregionalism in transnational environmental governance.
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Rosenberg, Michael, and Aslı Erim-Özdoğan. The Neolithic in Southeastern Anatolia. Edited by Gregory McMahon and Sharon Steadman. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195376142.013.0006.
Full textAbstract:
This article presents data on Neolithic sites in southeastern Anatolia, where, as elsewhere in southwestern Asia, the changes attendant on the Neolithic, while revolutionary in their consequences for the evolution of human cultural and social systems, were gradual. In the Early Aceramic we see the development of sedentary communities based on important economic changes, but ones that still retain major elements of the earlier hunter-gatherer, egalitarian social system. However, those elements are now buttressed with institutions (e.g., general-purpose public buildings, feasting) that permit the now somewhat larger communities to remain intact on a long-term basis and to act as a whole. In the Mature Aceramic (MA), we see some of those same institutions (public buildings and spaces) evolving to (of necessity) more strongly promote group identity at the community level in the still-larger communities that characterize the MA. Beginning in the MA III and continuing through the early part of the Pottery Neolithic, we see the gradual disintegration of the Aceramic Neolithic lifeway and its replacement by one that is quite different, wherein kinship appears to play a larger, more formal role. These social changes are intertwined with important economic changes (the development of the full southwestern Asia domesticate complex) and technological changes (the widespread adoption of ceramic technology), but the specifics of how they are related remains an open question.
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Bond, Patrick. Neoliberalism and Its Critics. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.269.
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Neoliberalism refers to a set of market-based ideas and policies ranging from government budget cuts and privatization of state enterprises to liberalization of currency controls, higher interest rates and deregulation of local finance, removal of import barriers (trade tariffs and quotas), and an emphasis on promotion of exports. While the effects of these policies have been quite consistent, they have sparked sharp criticism from the left. Critics pointed out the elites’ consistent failure in areas such as development aid, international financial regulation, Bretton Woods reform, the World Trade Organization’s Doha Agenda, and United Nations Security Council democratization. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the G20 held a summit in 2009 to discuss policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability. G20 leaders vowed to, among other promises, strengthen the longer term relevance, effectiveness and legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and to seek agreement on a post–2012 climate change regime. However, many intellectual critics of neoliberalism insisted that the G20 represented nothing new. Instead, they emphasize several urgent political priorities, such as: immediately recall and reorganize campaigning associated with defense against financial degradation; reconsider national state powers including exchange controls, defaults on unrepayble debts, financial nationalization and environmental reregulation, and the deglobalization/decommodification strategy for basic needs goods; and address the climate crisis by rejecting neoliberal strategies in favor of both consumption shifts and supply-side solutions.
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Nichols, Shaun. Rational Rules. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198869153.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
Moral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules offers an account of the acquisition of key aspects of normative systems in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. In particular, it offers statistical learning accounts of: (1) how people come to think that a rule is act-based, that is, the rule prohibits producing certain consequences but not allowing such consequences to occur or persist; (2) how people come to expect that a new rule will also be act-based; (3) how people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted; and (4) how people come to think that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group. This provides an empiricist theory of a key part of moral acquisition, since the learning procedures are domain general. It also entails that crucial parts of our moral system enjoy rational credentials since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference. There is another sense in which rules can be rational—they can be effective for achieving our ends, given our ecological settings. Rational Rules argues that at least some central components of our moral systems are indeed ecologically rational: they are good at helping us attain common goals. In addition, the book argues that a basic form of rule representation brings motivation along automatically. Thus, part of the explanation for why we follow moral rules is that we are built to follow rules quite generally.
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Winter, Jerrold. Our Love Affair with Drugs. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190051464.001.0001.
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Prescription, illicit, and recreational drugs touch all of our lives yet a basic understanding of these chemicals is largely absent among Americans. Jerrold Winter offers a comprehensive account of psychoactive drugs, chemicals which influence our brains in myriad ways. Manifestations of their influence on the brain are quite varied. There may be the comfort provided by opioids to those who are dying or in pain or, in everyday life, the surge of contentment for the users of caffeine, nicotine, heroin, alcohol, or marijuana upon the taking of their drug of choice. Turning to the more exotic, a drug such as LSD may alter the way the world looks to us; it may even inspire thoughts of God. Adding to the purely scientific questions which confront us are the ways in which our society chooses to respond to the presence of psychoactive drugs. Should they be banned and their users sent to prison, tolerated as a reflection of man's eternal search for an escape from anxiety, pain, and the monotony of daily life, or celebrated as therapeutically useful agents? Our Love Affair with Drugs is written for experts and novices alike. There are stories of, for example, how Timothy Leary caused the repeal of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Readers will learn of the transformation by Sir Charles Locock of a drug intended to dampen female sexual activity into the first effective drug for the treatment of the ancient disease of epilepsy. Alexander Shulgin's love of psychoactive drugs and his unconventional research practices illuminate the story of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a.k.a. Ecstasy, a drug now likely to find value in treating veterans and others suffering post-traumatic distress disorder. Winter links the excitement of drug discovery with the very practical matter of balancing the benefits and risks of these drugs.
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Cruickshank, Steven. Mathematical models and anaesthesia. Edited by Jonathan G. Hardman. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199642045.003.0027.
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The use of mathematics in medicine is not as widespread as it might be. While professional engineers are instructed in a wide variety of mathematical techniques during their training in preparation for their daily practice, tradition and the demands of other subjects mean that doctors give little attention to numerical matters in their education. A smattering of statistical concepts is typically the main mathematical field that we apply to medicine. The concept of the mathematical model is important and indeed familiar; personal finance, route planning, home decorating, and domestic projects all require the application of the basic mathematical tools we acquire at school. This utility is why we learn them. The insight that can be gained by applying mathematics to physiological and other problems within medical practice is, however, underexploited. The undoubted complexity of human biology and pathology perhaps leads us to give up too soon. There are useful and practical lessons that can be learned from the use of elementary mathematics in medicine. Anaesthetic training in particular lends itself to such learning with its emphasis on physics and clinical measurement. Much can be achieved with simple linear functions and hyperbolas. Further exploration into exponential and sinusoidal functions, although a little more challenging, is well within our scope and enables us to cope with many time-dependent and oscillatory phenomena that are important in clinical anaesthetic practice. Some fundamental physiological relationships are explained in this chapter using elementary mathematical functions. Building further on the foundation of simple models to cope with more complexity enables us to see the process, examine the predictions, and, most importantly, assess the plausibility of these models in practice. Understanding the structure of the model enables intelligent interpretation of its output. Some may be inspired to investigate some of the mathematical concepts and their applications further. The rewards can be intellectually, aesthetically, and practically fruitful. The subtle, revelatory, and quite beautiful connection between exponential and trigonometric functions through the concept of complex numbers is one example. That this connection has widespread practical importance too is most pleasing.
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Cook, Kerry H. Climate Change Scenarios and African Climate Change. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.545.
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Accurate projections of climate change under increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are needed to evaluate the environmental cost of anthropogenic emissions, and to guide mitigation efforts. These projections are nowhere more important than Africa, with its high dependence on rain-fed agriculture and, in many regions, limited resources for adaptation. Climate models provide our best method for climate prediction but there are uncertainties in projections, especially on regional space scale. In Africa, limitations of observational networks add to this uncertainty since a crucial step in improving model projections is comparisons with observations. Exceeding uncertainties associated with climate model simulation are uncertainties due to projections of future emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Humanity’s choices in emissions pathways will have profound effects on climate, especially after the mid-century.The African Sahel is a transition zone characterized by strong meridional precipitation and temperature gradients. Over West Africa, the Sahel marks the northernmost extent of the West African monsoon system. The region’s climate is known to be sensitive to sea surface temperatures, both regional and global, as well as to land surface conditions. Increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases are already causing amplified warming over the Sahara Desert and, consequently, increased rainfall in parts of the Sahel. Climate model projections indicate that much of this increased rainfall will be delivered in the form of more intense storm systems.The complicated and highly regional precipitation regimes of East Africa present a challenge for climate modeling. Within roughly 5º of latitude of the equator, rainfall is delivered in two seasons—the long rains in the spring, and the short rains in the fall. Regional climate model projections suggest that the long rains will weaken under greenhouse gas forcing, and the short rains season will extend farther into the winter months. Observations indicate that the long rains are already weakening.Changes in seasonal rainfall over parts of subtropical southern Africa are observed, with repercussions and challenges for agriculture and water availability. Some elements of these observed changes are captured in model simulations of greenhouse gas-induced climate change, especially an early demise of the rainy season. The projected changes are quite regional, however, and more high-resolution study is needed. In addition, there has been very limited study of climate change in the Congo Basin and across northern Africa. Continued efforts to understand and predict climate using higher-resolution simulation must be sustained to better understand observed and projected changes in the physical processes that support African precipitation systems as well as the teleconnections that communicate remote forcings into the continent.
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Howard, Colin R. Arenaviruses. Oxford University Press, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198570028.003.0032.
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There are few groups of viral zoonoses that have attracted such widespread publicity as the arenaviruses, particularly during the 1960’s and 1970’s when Lassa emerged as a major cause of haemorrhagic disease in West Africa. More than any other zoonoses, members of the family are used extensively for the study of virus-host relationships. Thus the study of this unique group of enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses has been pursued for two quite separate reasons. First, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCM) has been used as a model of persistent virus infections for over half a century; its study has contributed, and continues to contribute, a number of cardinal concepts to our present understanding of immunology. LCM virus remains the prototype of the Arenaviridae and is a common infection of laboratory mice, rats and hamsters. Once thought rare in humans there is now increasing evidence of LCM virus being implicated in renal disease and as a complication in organ transplantation. Second, certain arenaviruses cause severe haemorrhagic diseases in man, notably Lassa fever in Africa, Argentine and Bolivian haemorrhagic fevers in South America, Guaranito infection in Venezuela and Chaparé virus in Bolivia. The latter is a prime example for the need of ever-continuing vigilance for the emergence of new viral diseases; over the past few years several new arenaviruses have been reported as implicated with severe human disease and indeed the number of new arenaviruses discovered since the last edition of this book have increased the size of this virus family significantly.In common with LCM, the natural reservoir of these infections is a limited number of rodent species (Howard, 1986). Although the initial isolates from South America were at first erroneously designated as newly defined arboviruses, there is no evidence to implicate arthropod transmission for any arenavirus. However, similar methods of isolation and the necessity of trapping small animals have meant that the majority of arenaviruses have been isolated by workers in the arbovirus field. A good example of this is Guaranito virus that emerged during investigation of a dengue virus outbreak in Venezuela (Salas et al. 1991).There is an interesting spectrum of pathological processes among these viruses. All the evidence so far available suggests that the morbidity of Lassa fever and South American haemorrhagic fevers due to arenavirus infection results from the direct cytopathic action of these agents. This is in sharp contrast to the immunopathological basis of ‘classic’ lymphocytic choriomeningitis disease seen in adult mice infected with LCM virus and the use of this system for elucidating the phenomenon of H2-restriction of the host cytotoxic T cell response (Zinkernagel and Doherty 1979). Despite the utility of this experimental model for dissecting the nature of the immune response to virus infection and the growing interest in arenaviruses of rodents, there remains much to be done to elucidate the pathogenesis of these infections in humans.
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Taking Stock of Global Democratic Trends Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.31752/idea.2020.66.
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This GSoD In Focus provides a brief overview of the global state of democracy at the end of 2019, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, and assesses some of the preliminary impacts that the pandemic has had on democracy globally in 2020. Key findings include: • To address the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in March 2020, more than half the countries in the world (59 per cent) had declared a national state of emergency (SoE), enabling them to take drastic temporary (and in most cases necessary) measures to fight the pandemic. These measures have included in most cases temporarily curbing basic civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly and movement, and in some cases postponing elections. • International IDEA’s Global Monitor of COVID-19’s Impact on Democracy and Human Rights finds that more than half the countries in the world (61 per cent) had, by the end of November 2020, implemented measures to curb COVID-19 that were concerning from a democracy and human rights perspective. These violated democratic standards because they were either disproportionate, illegal, indefinite or unnecessary in relation to the health threat. • Concerning developments have been more common in countries that were already non-democratic prior to the pandemic (90 per cent) and less common, although still quite widespread, in democracies (43 per cent). • The democracies that have implemented democratically concerning measures are those that were already ailing before the pandemic. More than two-thirds were democracies that were either backsliding, eroding or weak prior to the pandemic. • Almost a year since the first outbreak of COVID-19, the pandemic seems to have deepened autocratization in most of the countries that were already non-democratic. However, in at least 3 of those countries (Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand), the pandemic has also tapped into existing simmering citizen discontent and may have been the tipping point in unleashing massive protest waves demanding democratic reform. The pandemic has also seemingly deepened democratic backsliding processes and exposed the democratic weakness and fragility of new or re-transitioned democracies (Malaysia, Mali, Myanmar, Sri Lanka). In a few cases, the pandemic has also exposed countries that showed no apparent sign of democratically ailing prior to the pandemic, but where concerning democratic developments have occurred during the pandemic and which risk seeing a significant deterioration in their democratic quality as a result (i.e. Argentina, El Salvador). • The aspects of democracy that have seen the most concerning developments during the pandemic are freedom of expression, media integrity, and personal integrity and security. However, the freedoms that have been restricted across most countries are freedom of movement and assembly. Another core democratic process that has been heavily affected by the pandemic is the electoral, with half the elections scheduled between February and December 2020 postponed due to the pandemic. • The pandemic has also shown democracy’s resilience and capacity for renovation. Innovation through accelerated digitalization has occurred across most regions of the world. And democratic institutions, such as parliaments, courts, electoral commissions, political parties, media and civil society actors, have fought back against attempts at executive overreach and democratic trampling or collaborated to ensure effective responses to the pandemic. The review of the state of democracy during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 uses qualitative analysis and data of events and trends in the region collected through International IDEA’s Global Monitor of COVID-19’s Impact on Democracy and Human Rights, an initiative co-funded by the European Union.