Academic literature on the topic 'Méthodes de policy-gradient'

The military coup that took place in Niger in the summer of 2023 raises several questions. To what extent do these events fit into the trajectory of the country’s development? What roles do foreign influence, domestic political factors, and protest movements play in these events? What are the prospects for Niger to emerge from the crisis caused by the coup? The eurocentric conceptualization of the 2023 events in academic literature and the media is full of stereotypes that not only complicate the understanding of the developments in the countries of the Central Sahel, but also lead to the formation of erroneous policies. According to standards developed in the West, Niger is classified as a “failed” or “weak” state, but such an approach does not correspond well to African social and economic realities. This article offers an alternative perspective for analyzing the Niger crisis. The authors argue that while foreign presence had a significant impact on the development of the crisis, equally detrimental was Niger’s authorities’ policy of confronting separatism by force, with a strong emphasis on encouraging vigilantism as a tool to deal with intercommunity conflicts. It is unlikely that the Nigerian military would come up with a realistic alternative to these methods that have been encouraged by Western partners in the context of combating the exaggerated problem of “jihadism”. La situation au Niger: crise transitionnelle ou crise systémique? Le coup d’État militaire survenu au Niger à l’été 2023 soulève plusieurs questions. Dans quelle mesure ces événements s’inscrivent-ils dans la trajectoire de développement du pays? Quels rôles jouent l’influence étrangère, les facteurs politiques nationaux et les mouvements de protestation dans ces événements? Quelles sont les perspectives pour le Niger de sortir de la crise provoquée par le coup d’État? La conceptualisation eurocentrique des événements de 2023 dans la littérature universitaire et dans les médias est pleine de stéréotypes qui non seulement compliquent la compréhension des évolutions dans les pays du Sahel central, mais conduisent également à la formation de politiques erronées. Selon les normes développées en Occident, le Niger est classé comme un État “défaillant” ou “faible”, mais une telle approche ne correspond pas bien aux réalités sociales et économiques africaines. Cet article propose une perspective alternative pour analyser la crise nigérienne. Les auteurs soutiennent que si la présence étrangère a eu un impact significatif sur le développement de la crise, la politique des autorités nigériennes consistant à lutter contre le séparatisme par la force, en mettant fortement l’accent sur l’encouragement du vigilantisme comme outil de gestion des conflits intercommunautaires, a été tout aussi préjudiciable. Il est peu probable que l’armée nigériane propose une alternative réaliste à ces méthodes encouragées par les partenaires occidentaux dans le cadre de la lutte contre le problème exagéré du “jihadisme”.

This study reviews Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and provides a detailed analysis to aid understanding of the book, combined with diverse scholars’ perspectives in the fields of economic history, political economics, and social sciences. This book is selected as my review target to answer the following research question, “How do we conquer the growth limits of capitalism?” This book gave me several ideas for the basis of my future research. In this review paper, I provide a guide for readers to understand ways to conquer the growth limits of capitalism. My study also provides a creative understanding of the evolution of the capitalist economy from new perspectives. In particular, it presents an analysis of Piketty’s diverse policy ideas from the viewpoint of a global history of capitalism. This will give a new lens through which to focus on understanding and resolving the inequalities of 21st-century hyper-capitalism and to construct policy for the current world economy. Finally, this study offers a causal loop model of Piketty’s findings and proposals, and suggests future research topics.

Unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) trajectory planning to avoid radar detection threats is a complicated optimization problem that has been widely studied. The rapid changes in Radar Cross Sections (RCSs), the unknown cruise trajectory of airborne radar, and the uncertain distribution of radars exacerbate the complexity of this problem. In this paper, we propose a novel UCAV trajectory planning method based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) technology to overcome the adverse impacts caused by the dynamics and randomness of environments. A predictive control model is constructed to describe the dynamic characteristics of the UCAV trajectory planning problem in detail. To improve the UCAV’s predictive ability, we propose a memory-enhanced twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (ME-TD3) algorithm that uses an attention mechanism to effectively extract environmental patterns from historical information. The simulation results show that the proposed method can successfully train UCAVs to carry out trajectory planning tasks in dynamic and unknown environments. Furthermore, the ME-TD3 algorithm outperforms other classical DRL algorithms in UCAV trajectory planning, exhibiting superior performance and adaptability.

A friend once told me I was wasting my time writing about cross-cultural perspectives on the beginnings of life. “Your work is interesting for its curiosity value,” he said, “but fundamentally worthless. What happens in other cultures is totally irrelevant to what is happening here.” Those were discouraging words, but as I followed the American debates about the beginnings and ends of life, it seemed he was right. Anthropologists have written a great deal about birth and death rites in other societies and about non-western notions of personhood, but to date our findings have had little impact on American policy, ethics, or law. The recognized experts on contentious topics such as abortion and euthanasia tend to come from the fields of philosophy, bioethics, theology, law, and biology, but rarely from the social sciences. I was a bit surprised, therefore, to be invited to address the Thomas A. Pitts Memorial Lectureship on “Defining the Beginning and the End of Human Life.”

In recent years two high quality overviews of the economic history of Indonesia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been published that testify of the growing maturity of the field. The two books – The Indonesian Economy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A History of Missed Opportunities by Anne Booth (1998), and The Emergence of a National Economy. An Economic History of Indonesia, 1800-2000 by a team of authors (Howard Dick, Vincent Houben, Thomas Lindblad and Thee Kian Wie) (2002) – are written by distinguished experts in the field. Both books also aim to be comprehensive, but interestingly, they do this in very different ways. But let me focus on the similarities first: apart from the obvious fact that they want to present an economic history of Indonesia over the past twohundred years, they also have in common that they stress the links between economic and political history. Both try ‘to bring the state back in’, by focussing on the process of state formation – in particular in the colonial period – and, even more importantly, by analysing the consequences of government policies for economic development. The leading theme of the The Emergence (TE), as formulated in the programmatic opening chapter by Howard Dick, are the links between state-formation, the nation state, and the national economy. Similarly, The Indonesian Economy (TIE) contains a detailed analysis of government policy, and in the final analysis of the ‘missed opportunities’ of Indonesia's past, the state plays a crucial role. This also brings me to the other obvious striking similarity: both books try to explain the failure of Indonesian economic development in this period (or at least until the second half of the 1960s), and discuss the reasons why economic development was relatively slow.

Last year, a new book by Dr. Thomas Durell Young was published by the British publisher Bloomsbury, entitled THE ANATOMY OF POST-COMMUNIST EUROPEAN DEFENCE INSTITUTIONS: THE MIRAGE OF MILITARY MODERNITY. The author probably does not need any special introduction for those whose work is related to security and defence matters. For all others, though, let me mention that he is a long-time lecturer at the Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR) from Monterey, California, USA. Prior to joining CCMR, Dr Young was a Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, where he focused on European politico-military issues, as well as on joint planning, execution and management of systems and procedures. He holds a Ph.D. in international economics from Geneva, and has authored several monographs. From 1989 to 2017 he was an editor of Small War and Insurgencies, and he is currently an editor of Defence and Security Analyses. An important fact is that his work has led him to travel to the majority of European countries and, as such, he is very well acquainted with their respective defence systems, defence and military history, as well as many defence and military decision-makers and experts, with whom he had shared his views and experiences. In most of these countries he has also acted as a defence adviser. Dr Young is an author whose field of research is extremely rich, both in theory and practice. It is therefore no surprise that his new book reflects his thorough knowledge of the historical background of the former communist states, their defence systems and their armed forces. The work is divided into nine chapters. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, it includes the following thematic sections: The State of Communist Defense Institutions and Armed Forces, circa 1990; NATO Exports its “New Model Army”: Why It Did Not Take; Former Soviet Republics' Defense Institutions; Former Warsaw Pact Republics' Defense Institutions; Former Yugoslav Republics' Defense Institutions; Building Defense Institutions: Sharpening the Western Mind; Reforming Western Policy and Management of Defense Reform. The concluding chapter is entitled Getting to Honest Defense. Young is very systematic and analytical when presenting the topic, and uses all the characteristics of comparative analysis. Wherever historical, political, defence and military bases are identical or highly similar, he provides a thorough explanation of the reasons for significant differences in further development, as well as those who had prevented the occurrence of changes or their sufficient implementation. He is very insightful in his attempts. The basic principle of his research or the criterion for the evaluation of defence institutions in the former communist states is the “Western Mind”, as he calls it. In short, a comparison of western and eastern thinking reveals key differences in planning, decision-making, leadership and implementation of the state’s defence function. The important criteria Young considers when implementing these policies are a review of defence institutions, the public policy framework and compliance of concepts, defence planning techniques, national-level command, the military decision-making process, and the concepts of operations, logistics and professionalism. According to his findings, these are the major areas where the former communist states differ. The differences between them are normally related to the past regimes and mind-sets in the respective countries. With time, some of the countries have managed to successfully overcome those differences and implement the “Western Mind”, while others have not been so successful. Although the author uses the Western Mind as the criterion to establish the level of development of defence systems in eastern countries, he does not claim this to be the only and the best criterion everyone should aim for. Quite the opposite: in his chapter “NATO Exports its ‘New Model Army’: Why It Did Not Take”, he provides a thorough explanation of where, when and why critical mistakes or flaws have been made, which still prevent some NATO members to perform up to their potential within the Alliance. He does not, however, miss the fact that the western democratic concepts of defence management cannot serve just as a means to simply follow the model of others. Rather, these areas must be functional and effective, as well as adapted to each separate country. In his book, the author lists several examples of bad practice, highlighting at the same time some of the unique and good solutions put forward by some countries. Nevertheless, individual chapters reveal some of the characteristics specific to a subject area or a country, which are hard to classify as good or bad. They are just special features that require new solutions with a higher level of functionality. In the conclusion, the latest monograph by Thomas Young lists proposals on how to build defence institutions using the Western Mind. These institutions first must be upgraded in order to be more effective in responding to new security threats. For young countries, which some twenty or twenty-five years ago still used communist concepts, Young proposes a new approach called “Honest Defense”, which is generally intended for all those building collective defence. The approach brings something new for amateurs of such topics, and at the same time serves as a broadly useful and helpful study material for experts who wish and are obliged to find concrete solutions and opportunities for a new and safe future. The monograph includes interesting concrete examples from individual countries, which the author professionally and critically comments on. The discussed examples comprise both good and bad practice. Additionally, they include an analysis of the development of the defence system and institutions in Slovenia, which enables a neutral external observer to understand our development as well as identify their own strengths and deficiencies.

Introduction. As part of the Bologna process since September 1, 2016, the Russian government has granted the right to award academic degrees to leading educational and scientific organizations on par with Dissertation Defense Councils under Higher Attestation Commission, modeled after the system adopted at OECD member-states and universities. Currently, 27 educational and scientific organizations are exercising this right. However, the problematic issue is the assessment of their efficiency. The purpose of this research is to analyze the efficiency of Dissertation Councils of the above-mentioned scientific and educational organizations by comparing them in terms of efficiency with classical Dissertation Defense Councils established by the decree of the Ministry of Education and Scie nce of Russia. Materials and Methods. The research objects are Dissertation Councils of scientific and educational organizations of higher education (hereinafter referred to as pilot organizations) that have the right of independent award of academic degrees according to the Federal Law No. 148 issued on May 23, 2016 “On Amendments to Article 4 of the Federal Law ‘On research and state scientific and technological policy’”. Dissertation Councils efficiency analysis is made using following indicators: Dissertation Councils members’ compliance with the Higher Attestation Commission requirements, structure of candidate and doctoral defenses, Dissertation Councils members’ publications and publication activity of degree seekers. Statistical data analysis methods were applied including mean comparison me thods, clustering, factor analysis. Results. There are 337 pilot Dissertation Defense Councils and 374 classical Dissertation Defense Councils. In 2016, 24% of defenses were reviewed by pilot councils of the total number of defenses in classical Dissertation Councils of the entire network. In 2018 70 doctoral and 591 candidate defenses in “pilot” councils were held, amounting to 7% of the total number of defe nses in classical Dissertation Councils. Discussion and Conclusion. The article will be useful to the heads of federal authorities making management decisions in the field of training and certification of highly qualified scientific personnel, to the chairmen and scientific secretaries of dissertation councils, as well as to scientific and pedagogical workers carrying out analytical studies in this subject area.

The article is devoted to the problems of the development of modern Chinese cities, which describes the development of large Chinese cities in the 20th and 21st centuries, analyzes contemporary problems and the conditions for their formation in the near future. The pur- pose of the article is to show the dynamic development of the largest and most important modern cities in China and the problems that arise in connection with their development. Novelty — first in the periodical literature describes the development of megacities as a ra- tional option for the territorial organization of urban areas. The methodological basis of the article consists of historical-logical and complex approach, tabular and graphical me- thods of presenting research results. In the 80s, the fi rst special economic zones were created. His process was characterized by the introduction of elements of the free market, the de- collectization of agriculture, changes in the sectoral structure of the economy and its ration- alization. A prolonged concentration of the population in large cities of China causes their further expansion and the formation of large metropolitan clusters — megacities. Given the development of the Chinese economy, it should be understood that its participation in international exchange, despite notable progress, still too small; expansion in world markets occurs with low quality and, as a result, with low prices for Chinese goods; China’s growing position in the global economy is predominantly quantitative rather than qualitative. To con- solidate China as one of the leaders in the process of economic globalization, it is important to ensure the eff ective management of such large centers of concentration of human and material resources as megacities. In this regard, much attention is paid to the analysis of trends and the conditions for the further development of Chinese cities. It is determined that in 20-25 years, more than 1,000,000,000 Chinese citizens will live in large cities. Th e process of converting them into a new modifi ed form, megalopolises, will continue. Th e factors that will infl uence the development of modern megacities, and the set of internal processes for their further development (political, social, economic, ethnic, religious and environmental) that require some structuring are identifi ed. Th e negative aspects of urbanization were iden- tifi ed: growing income inequality and a deterioration in population structure. To overcome these phenomena, restructuring of the regional economy and measures to overcome inequa- lity are considered useful, where preference is given to income distribution mechanisms de- pending on the quality of labor, stimulation of social responsibility of employers and others. Th is assessment of China’s demographic policy is aimed at improving family planning.

Background and Objective: Suicide attempts are 10-20X more common than completed suicide and an important risk factor for death by suicide, yet most people who attempt suicide do not die by suicide. The process of recovering after a suicide attempt has not been well studied. The Reasons to go on Living (RTGOL) Project, a narrative web-based study, focuses on experiences of people who have attempted suicide and made the decision to go on living, a process not well studied. Narrative research is ideally suited to understanding personal experiences critical to recovery following a suicide attempt, including the transition to a state of hopefulness. Voices from people with lived experience can help us plan and conceptualize this work. This paper reports on a secondary research question of the larger study: what stories do participants tell of the positive role/impact of the mental health system. Material and Methods: A website created for The RTGOL Project (www.thereasons.ca) enabled participants to anonymously submit a story about their suicide attempt and recovery, a process which enabled participation from a large and diverse group of participants. The only direction given was “if you have made a suicide attempt or seriously considered suicide and now want to go on living, we want to hear from you.” The unstructured narrative format allowed participants to describe their experiences in their own words, to include and emphasize what they considered important. Over 5 years, data analysis occurred in several phases over the course of the study, resulting in the identification of data that were inputted into an Excel file. This analysis used stories where participants described positive involvement with the mental health system (50 stories). Results: Several participants reflected on experiences many years previous, providing the privilege of learning how their life unfolded, what made a difference. Over a five-year period, 50 of 226 stories identified positive experiences with mental health care with sufficient details to allow analysis, and are the focus of this paper. There were a range of suicidal behaviours in these 50 stories, from suicidal ideation only to medically severe suicide attempts. Most described one or more suicide attempts. Three themes identified included: 1) trust and relationship with a health care professional, 2) the role of friends and family and friends, and 3) a wide range of services. Conclusion: Stories open a window into the experiences of the period after a suicide attempt. This study allowed for an understanding of how mental health professionals might help individuals who have attempted suicide write a different story, a life-affirming story. The stories that participants shared offer some understanding of “how” to provide support at a most-needed critical juncture for people as they interact with health care providers, including immediately after a suicide attempt. Results of this study reinforce that just one caring professional can make a tremendous difference to a person who has survived a suicide attempt. Key Words: web-based; suicide; suicide attempt; mental health system; narrative research Word Count: 478 Introduction My Third (or fourth) Suicide AttemptI laid in the back of the ambulance, the snow of too many doses of ativan dissolving on my tongue.They hadn't even cared enough about meto put someone in the back with me,and so, frustrated,I'd swallowed all the pills I had with me— not enough to do what I wanted it to right then,but more than enough to knock me out for a good 14 hours.I remember very little after that;benzodiazepines like ativan commonly cause pre- and post-amnesia, says Google helpfullyI wake up in a locked rooma woman manically drawing on the windows with crayonsthe colors of light through the glassdiffused into rainbows of joy scattered about the roomas if she were coloring on us all,all of the tattered remnants of humanity in a psych wardmade into a brittle mosaic, a quilt of many hues, a Technicolor dreamcoatand I thoughtI am so glad to be able to see this. (Story 187)The nurse opening that door will have a lasting impact on how this story unfolds and on this person’s life. Each year, almost one million people die from suicide, approximately one death every 40 seconds. Suicide attempts are much more frequent, with up to an estimated 20 attempts for every death by suicide.1 Suicide-related behaviours range from suicidal ideation and self-injury to death by suicide. We are unable to directly study those who die by suicide, but effective intervention after a suicide attempt could reduce the risk of subsequent death by suicide. Near-fatal suicide attempts have been used to explore the boundary with completed suicides. Findings indicated that violent suicide attempters and serious attempters (seriousness of the medical consequences to define near-fatal attempts) were more likely to make repeated, and higher lethality suicide attempts.2 In a case-control study, the medically severe suicide attempts group (78 participants), epidemiologically very similar to those who complete suicide, had significantly higher communication difficulties; the risk for death by suicide multiplied if accompanied by feelings of isolation and alienation.3 Most research in suicidology has been quantitative, focusing almost exclusively on identifying factors that may be predictive of suicidal behaviours, and on explanation rather than understanding.4 Qualitative research, focusing on the lived experiences of individuals who have attempted suicide, may provide a better understanding of how to respond in empathic and helpful ways to prevent future attempts and death by suicide.4,5 Fitzpatrick6 advocates for narrative research as a valuable qualitative method in suicide research, enabling people to construct and make sense of the experiences and their world, and imbue it with meaning. A review of qualitative studies examining the experiences of recovering from or living with suicidal ideation identified 5 interconnected themes: suffering, struggle, connection, turning points, and coping.7 Several additional qualitative studies about attempted suicide have been reported in the literature. Participants have included patients hospitalized for attempting suicide8, and/or suicidal ideation,9 out-patients following a suicide attempt and their caregivers,10 veterans with serious mental illness and at least one hospitalization for a suicide attempt or imminent suicide plan.11 Relationships were a consistent theme in these studies. Interpersonal relationships and an empathic environment were perceived as therapeutic and protective, enabling the expression of thoughts and self-understanding.8 Given the connection to relationship issues, the authors suggested it may be helpful to provide support for the relatives of patients who have attempted suicide. A sheltered, friendly environment and support systems, which included caring by family and friends, and treatment by mental health professionals, helped the suicidal healing process.10 Receiving empathic care led to positive changes and an increased level of insight; just one caring professional could make a tremendous difference.11 Kraft and colleagues9 concluded with the importance of hearing directly from those who are suicidal in order to help them, that only when we understand, “why suicide”, can we help with an alternative, “why life?” In a grounded theory study about help-seeking for self-injury, Long and colleagues12 identified that self-injury was not the problem for their participants, but a panacea, even if temporary, to painful life experiences. Participant narratives reflected a complex journey for those who self-injured: their wish when help-seeking was identified by the theme “to be treated like a person”. There has also been a focus on the role and potential impact of psychiatric/mental health nursing. Through interviews with experienced in-patient nurses, Carlen and Bengtsson13 identified the need to see suicidal patients as subjective human beings with unique experiences. This mirrors research with patients, which concluded that the interaction with personnel who are devoted, hope-mediating and committed may be crucial to a patient’s desire to continue living.14 Interviews with individuals who received mental health care for a suicidal crisis following a serious attempt led to the development of a theory for psychiatric nurses with the central variable, reconnecting the person with humanity across 3 phases: reflecting an image of humanity, guiding the individual back to humanity, and learning to live.15 Other research has identified important roles for nurses working with patients who have attempted suicide by enabling the expression of thoughts and developing self-understanding8, helping to see things differently and reconnecting with others,10 assisting the person in finding meaning from their experience to turn their lives around, and maintain/and develop positive connections with others.16 However, one literature review identified that negative attitudes toward self-harm were common among nurses, with more positive attitudes among mental health nurses than general nurses. The authors concluded that education, both reflective and interactive, could have a positive impact.17 This paper is one part of a larger web-based narrative study, the Reasons to go on Living Project (RTGOL), that seeks to understand the transition from making a suicide attempt to choosing life. When invited to tell their stories anonymously online, what information would people share about their suicide attempts? This paper reports on a secondary research question of the larger study: what stories do participants tell of the positive role/impact of the mental health system. The focus on the positive impact reflects an appreciative inquiry approach which can promote better practice.18 Methods Design and Sample A website created for The RTGOL Project (www.thereasons.ca) enabled participants to anonymously submit a story about their suicide attempt and recovery. Participants were required to read and agree with a consent form before being able to submit their story through a text box or by uploading a file. No demographic information was requested. Text submissions were embedded into an email and sent to an account created for the Project without collecting information about the IP address or other identifying information. The content of the website was reviewed by legal counsel before posting, and the study was approved by the local Research Ethics Board. Stories were collected for 5 years (July 2008-June 2013). The RTGOL Project enabled participation by a large, diverse audience, at their own convenience of time and location, providing they had computer access. The unstructured narrative format allowed participants to describe their experiences in their own words, to include and emphasize what they considered important. Of the 226 submissions to the website, 112 described involvement at some level with the mental health system, and 50 provided sufficient detail about positive experiences with mental health care to permit analysis. There were a range of suicidal behaviours in these 50 stories: 8 described suicidal ideation only; 9 met the criteria of medically severe suicide attempts3; 33 described one or more suicide attempts. For most participants, the last attempt had been some years in the past, even decades, prior to writing. Results Stories of positive experiences with mental health care described the idea of a door opening, a turning point, or helping the person to see their situation differently. Themes identified were: (1) relationship and trust with a Health Care Professional (HCP), (2) the role of family and friends (limited to in-hospital experiences), and (3) the opportunity to access a range of services. The many reflective submissions of experiences told many years after the suicide attempt(s) speaks to the lasting impact of the experience for that individual. Trust and Relationship with a Health Care Professional A trusting relationship with a health professional helped participants to see things in a different way, a more hopeful way and over time. “In that time of crisis, she never talked down to me, kept her promises, didn't panic, didn't give up, and she kept believing in me. I guess I essentially borrowed the hope that she had for me until I found hope for myself.” (Story# 35) My doctor has worked extensively with me. I now realize that this is what will keep me alive. To be able to feel in my heart that my doctor does care about me and truly wants to see me get better.” (Story 34). The writer in Story 150 was a nurse, an honours graduate. The 20 years following graduation included depression, hospitalizations and many suicide attempts. “One day after supper I took an entire bottle of prescription pills, then rode away on my bike. They found me late that night unconscious in a downtown park. My heart threatened to stop in the ICU.” Then later, “I finally found a person who was able to connect with me and help me climb out of the pit I was in. I asked her if anyone as sick as me could get better, and she said, “Yes”, she had seen it happen. Those were the words I had been waiting to hear! I quickly became very motivated to get better. I felt heard and like I had just found a big sister, a guide to help me figure out how to live in the world. This person was a nurse who worked as a trauma therapist.” At the time when the story was submitted, the writer was applying to a graduate program. Role of Family and Friends Several participants described being affected by their family’s response to their suicide attempt. Realizing the impact on their family and friends was, for some, a turning point. The writer in Story 20 told of experiences more than 30 years prior to the writing. She described her family of origin as “truly dysfunctional,” and she suffered from episodes of depression and hospitalization during her teen years. Following the birth of her second child, and many family difficulties, “It was at this point that I became suicidal.” She made a decision to kill herself by jumping off the balcony (6 stories). “At the very last second as I hung onto the railing of the balcony. I did not want to die but it was too late. I landed on the parking lot pavement.” She wrote that the pain was indescribable, due to many broken bones. “The physical pain can be unbearable. Then you get to see the pain and horror in the eyes of someone you love and who loves you. Many people suggested to my husband that he should leave me in the hospital, go on with life and forget about me. During the process of recovery in the hospital, my husband was with me every day…With the help of psychiatrists and a later hospitalization, I was actually diagnosed as bipolar…Since 1983, I have been taking lithium and have never had a recurrence of suicidal thoughts or for that matter any kind of depression.” The writer in Story 62 suffered childhood sexual abuse. When she came forward with it, she felt she was not heard. Self-harm on a regular basis was followed by “numerous overdoses trying to end my life.” Overdoses led to psychiatric hospitalizations that were unhelpful because she was unable to trust staff. “My way of thinking was that ending my life was the only answer. There had been numerous attempts, too many to count. My thoughts were that if I wasn’t alive I wouldn’t have to deal with my problems.” In her final attempt, she plunged over the side of a mountain, dropping 80 feet, resulting in several serious injuries. “I was so angry that I was still alive.” However, “During my hospitalization I began to realize that my family and friends were there by my side continuously, I began to realize that I wasn't only hurting myself. I was hurting all the important people in my life. It was then that I told myself I am going to do whatever it takes.” A turning point is not to say that the difficulties did not continue. The writer of Story 171 tells of a suicide attempt 7 years previous, and the ongoing anguish. She had been depressed for years and had thoughts of suicide on a daily basis. After a serious overdose, she woke up the next day in a hospital bed, her husband and 2 daughters at her bed. “Honestly, I was disappointed to wake up. But, then I saw how scared and hurt they were. Then I was sorry for what I had done to them. Since then I have thought of suicide but know that it is tragic for the family and is a hurt that can never be undone. Today I live with the thought that I am here for a reason and when it is God's time to take me then I will go. I do believe living is harder than dying. I do believe I was born for a purpose and when that is accomplished I will be released. …Until then I try to remind myself of how I am blessed and try to appreciate the wonders of the world and the people in it.” Range of Services The important role of mental health and recovery services was frequently mentioned, including dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT)/cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), recovery group, group therapy, Alcoholics Anonymous, accurate diagnosis, and medications. The writer in Story 30 was 83 years old when she submitted her story, reflecting on a life with both good and bad times. She first attempted suicide at age 10 or 12. A serious post-partum depression followed the birth of her second child, and over the years, she experienced periods of suicidal intent: “Consequently, a few years passed and I got to feeling suicidal again. I had pills in one pocket and a clipping for “The Recovery Group” in the other pocket. As I rode on the bus trying to make up my mind, I decided to go to the Recovery Group first. I could always take the pills later. I found the Recovery Group and yoga helpful; going to meetings sometimes twice a day until I got thinking more clearly and learned how to deal with my problems.” Several participants described the value of CBT or DBT in learning to challenge perceptions. “I have tools now to differentiate myself from the illness. I learned I'm not a bad person but bad things did happen to me and I survived.”(Story 3) “The fact is that we have thoughts that are helpful and thoughts that are destructive….. I knew it was up to me if I was to get better once and for all.” (Story 32): “In the hospital I was introduced to DBT. I saw a nurse (Tanya) every day and attended a group session twice a week, learning the techniques. I worked with the people who wanted to work with me this time. Tanya said the same thing my counselor did “there is no study that can prove whether or not suicide solves problems” and I felt as though I understood it then. If I am dead, then all the people that I kept pushing away and refusing their help would be devastated. If I killed myself with my own hand, my family would be so upset. DBT taught me how to ‘ride my emotional wave’. ……….. DBT has changed my life…….. My life is getting back in order now, thanks to DBT, and I have lots of reasons to go on living.”(Story 19) The writer of Story 67 described the importance of group therapy. “Group therapy was the most helpful for me. It gave me something besides myself to focus on. Empathy is such a powerful emotion and a pathway to love. And it was a huge relief to hear others felt the same and had developed tools of their own that I could try for myself! I think I needed to learn to communicate and recognize when I was piling everything up to build my despair. I don’t think I have found the best ways yet, but I am lifetimes away from that teenage girl.” (Story 67) The author of story 212 reflected on suicidal ideation beginning over 20 years earlier, at age 13. Her first attempt was at 28. “I thought everyone would be better off without me, especially my children, I felt like the worst mum ever, I felt like a burden to my family and I felt like I was a failure at life in general.” She had more suicide attempts, experienced the death of her father by suicide, and then finally found her doctor. “Now I’m on meds for a mood disorder and depression, my family watch me closely, and I see my doctor regularly. For the first time in 20 years, I love being a mum, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a cousin etc.” Discussion The 50 stories that describe positive experiences in the health care system constitute a larger group than most other similar studies, and most participants had made one or more suicide attempts. Several writers reflected back many years, telling stories of long ago, as with the 83-year old participant (Story 30) whose story provided the privilege of learning how the author’s life unfolded. In clinical practice, we often do not know – how did the story turn out? The stories that describe receiving health care speak to the impact of the experience, and the importance of the issues identified in the mental health system. We identified 3 themes, but it was often the combination that participants described in their stories that was powerful, as demonstrated in Story 20, the young new mother who had fallen from a balcony 30 years earlier. Voices from people with lived experience can help us plan and conceptualize our clinical work. Results are consistent with, and add to, the previous work on the importance of therapeutic relationships.8,10,11,14–16 It is from the stories in this study that we come to understand the powerful experience of seeing a family members’ reaction following a participant’s suicide attempt, and how that can be a potent turning point as identified by Lakeman and Fitzgerald.7 Ghio and colleagues8 and Lakeman16 identified the important role for staff/nurses in supporting families due to the connection to relationship issues. This research also calls for support for families to recognize the important role they have in helping the person understand how much they mean to them, and to promote the potential impact of a turning point. The importance of the range of services reflect Lakeman and Fitzgerald’s7 theme of coping, associating positive change by increasing the repertoire of coping strategies. These findings have implications for practice, research and education. Working with individuals who are suicidal can help them develop and tell a different story, help them move from a death-oriented to life-oriented position,15 from “why suicide” to “why life.”9 Hospitalization provides a person with the opportunity to reflect, to take time away from “the real world” to consider oneself, the suicide attempt, connections with family and friends and life goals, and to recover physically and emotionally. Hospitalization is also an opening to involve the family in the recovery process. The intensity of the immediate period following a suicide attempt provides a unique opportunity for nurses to support and coach families, to help both patients and family begin to see things differently and begin to create that different story. In this way, family and friends can be both a support to the person who has attempted suicide, and receive help in their own struggles with this experience. It is also important to recognize that this short period of opportunity is not specific to the nurses in psychiatric units, as the nurses caring for a person after a medically severe suicide attempt will frequently be the nurses in the ICU or Emergency departments. Education, both reflective and interactive, could have a positive impact.17 Helping staff develop the attitudes, skills and approach necessary to be helpful to a person post-suicide attempt is beginning to be reported in the literature.21 Further implications relate to nursing curriculum. Given the extent of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide, this merits an important focus. This could include specific scenarios, readings by people affected by suicide, both patients themselves and their families or survivors, and discussions with individuals who have made an attempt(s) and made a decision to go on living. All of this is, of course, not specific to nursing. All members of the interprofessional health care team can support the transition to recovery of a person after a suicide attempt using the strategies suggested in this paper, in addition to other evidence-based interventions and treatments. Findings from this study need to be considered in light of some specific limitations. First, the focus was on those who have made a decision to go on living, and we have only the information the participants included in their stories. No follow-up questions were possible. The nature of the research design meant that participants required access to a computer with Internet and the ability to communicate in English. This study does not provide a comprehensive view of in-patient care. However, it offers important inputs to enhance other aspects of care, such as assessing safety as a critical foundation to care. We consider these limitations were more than balanced by the richness of the many stories that a totally anonymous process allowed. Conclusion Stories open a window into the experiences of a person during the period after a suicide attempt. The RTGOL Project allowed for an understanding of how we might help suicidal individuals change the script, write a different story. The stories that participants shared give us some understanding of “how” to provide support at a most-needed critical juncture for people as they interact with health care providers immediately after a suicide attempt. While we cannot know the experiences of those who did not survive a suicide attempt, results of this study reinforce that just one caring professional can make a crucial difference to a person who has survived a suicide attempt. We end with where we began. Who will open the door? References 1. World Health Organization. Suicide prevention and special programmes. http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/index.html Geneva: Author; 2013.2. Giner L, Jaussent I, Olie E, et al. Violent and serious suicide attempters: One step closer to suicide? J Clin Psychiatry 2014:73(3):3191–197.3. Levi-Belz Y, Gvion Y, Horesh N, et al. Mental pain, communication difficulties, and medically serious suicide attempts: A case-control study. Arch Suicide Res 2014:18:74–87.4. Hjelmeland H and Knizek BL. Why we need qualitative research in suicidology? Suicide Life Threat Behav 2010:40(1):74–80.5. Gunnell D. A population health perspective on suicide research and prevention: What we know, what we need to know, and policy priorities. Crisis 2015:36(3):155–60.6. Fitzpatrick S. Looking beyond the qualitative and quantitative divide: Narrative, ethics and representation in suicidology. Suicidol Online 2011:2:29–37.7. Lakeman R and FitzGerald M. How people live with or get over being suicidal: A review of qualitative studies. J Adv Nurs 2008:64(2):114–26.8. Ghio L, Zanelli E, Gotelli S, et al. Involving patients who attempt suicide in suicide prevention: A focus group study. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 2011:18:510–18.9. Kraft TL, Jobes DA, Lineberry TW., Conrad, A., & Kung, S. Brief report: Why suicide? Perceptions of suicidal inpatients and reflections of clinical researchers. Arch Suicide Res 2010:14(4):375-382.10. Sun F, Long A, Tsao L, et al. The healing process following a suicide attempt: Context and intervening conditions. Arch Psychiatr Nurs 2014:28:66–61.11. Montross Thomas L, Palinkas L, et al. Yearning to be heard: What veterans teach us about suicide risk and effective interventions. Crisis 2014:35(3):161–67.12. Long M, Manktelow R, and Tracey A. The healing journey: Help seeking for self-injury among a community population. Qual Health Res 2015:25(7):932–44.13. Carlen P and Bengtsson A. Suicidal patients as experienced by psychiatric nurses in inpatient care. Int J Ment Health Nurs 2007:16:257–65.14. Samuelsson M, Wiklander M, Asberg M, et al. Psychiatric care as seen by the attempted suicide patient. J Adv Nurs 2000:32(3):635–43.15. Cutcliffe JR, Stevenson C, Jackson S, et al. A modified grounded theory study of how psychiatric nurses work with suicidal people. Int J Nurs Studies 2006:43(7):791–802.16. Lakeman, R. What can qualitative research tell us about helping a person who is suicidal? Nurs Times 2010:106(33):23–26.17. Karman P, Kool N, Poslawsky I, et al. Nurses’ attitudes toward self-harm: a literature review. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 2015:22:65–75.18. Carter B. ‘One expertise among many’ – working appreciatively to make miracles instead of finding problems: Using appreciative inquiry as a way of reframing research. J Res Nurs 2006:11(1): 48–63.19. Lieblich A, Tuval-Mashiach R, Zilber T. Narrative research: Reading, analysis, and interpretation. Sage Publications; 1998.20. Braun V and Clarke V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual Res Psychol 2006:3(2):77–101.21. Kishi Y, Otsuka K, Akiyama K, et al. Effects of a training workshop on suicide prevention among emergency room nurses. Crisis 2014:35(5):357–61.

This is the thirtieth issue of Juridica International. The first was published back in 1996, and, in general, one issue has been published each year since then. While 2007, 2008, 2014, and 2017 saw the publication of two issues each, no year has failed to feature. Though serving as a journal of the University of Tartu, Juridica International is also the only peer-reviewed legal journal published in Estonia to enjoy broad international distribution. Thus, for 26 years, it has been the calling card of Estonian jurisprudence on the world stage. However, it has been more than that. The involvement of foreign authors is just as important as the aim of providing Estonian authors with an opportunity to participate in international scientific discussion. There is every reason to be proud of the fact that the journal’s 30 issues have featured authors from 25 other countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, and the USA. Among the authors are many who are in the uppermost echelon of the world’s leading professors in their field. In its first years, one of the main goals for Juridica International was to introduce and analyse the legal reforms carried out in Estonia, which were of vital interest to foreign readers as well; however, this has not been the case for a long time now. Today, the primary focus is on participation in international legal discussion, wherein, alongside the development of national law, great emphasis is placed on European Union law and other cross-border regulation whose reach extends between countries. That said, the purpose of introducing the development of Estonian law and legal thinking at international level has not been discarded. After all, Estonia is still highly noteworthy as a country of successful reforms, not least legal reforms. Therefore, a matter of ongoing interest is whether this country, which has succeeded so well with groundbreaking reforms, can be as successful in a stable situation across the board. The range of topics covered in the 30 issues of Juridica International is very wide; no important area of law has been neglected, and listing all of them would take too long. What could be highlighted above all are topics related to European Union law and the Constitution of Estonia, but also crucial are the writings on many issues related to aspects of the law of obligations, property law, company law, penal law, competition law, personal data protection, media law, medical law, international law, and several other fields. Significant attention has been paid to the possibilities for harmonisation of law and mutual interactions, both between countries and between distinct branches of law. Likewise, the writings have considered key general issues of law, such as its interpretation, the effect of justice policy on legislative drafting, and the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals. The ability to publish a journal – and a reason to do so – exists only if readers are interested in that journal. What makes me the happiest is that, over the years, readers’ interest has increased and the geographical area within which people read Juridica International has grown. Most certainly, the fact that for quite some time the journal has been available online has contributed to this. A big ‘thank you’ to all of the readers! I also want to thank every one of the authors, the members of the editorial board, and my colleagues who have made it possible to publish 30 quality issues of Juridica International. I especially wish to highlight the contribution of the foreign members of the editorial board – professors Christian von Bar, Werner Krawietz (1933–2019), Erik Nerep, and Thomas Wilhelmsson – whose participation in the board’s work has played an important role in securing the solid international reputation of the journal. I hope for continued enthusiasm on the writers’ part and interest among readers for the next 30 issues!

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Policy analysis, in keeping with Jeremy Bentham’s principle of seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number,” tends to focus on aggregate or average effects, with an occasional glance at distributional issues: in particular, the effects of a policy on those currently disadvantaged. Politics,...

Abstract HENRY VIII, stricken and speechless-having reluctantly accepted the inevitability of death by squeezing Archbishop Cranmer’s hand as token that he ‘trusted in the Lord’-departed this life on 2.8 January 1547. ‘The said king died of a dropsi, as it was thought’, wrote his loving son Edward, with great composure, a couple of years later.1 Even while Henry lay dying the political vultures were gathering. Sir William Paget, writing to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, in the summer of 1549, exhorted the Lord Protector to ‘Remember what you promised me in the gallery at Westminster, before the breath was out of the body of the King that dead is : remember what you promised immediately after, devising with me concerning the place which you now occupy’. The precise nature of these promises is not made apparent; but, clearly, the two politicians had spent Henry VIII’s dying moments planning how best to turn the situation to their own advantage. The new monarch-to-be was a child, 9 years of age, and the old King had sought to meet the difficulties posed by the government of a minor by the simple expedient of ruling England from the grave. Henry’s will, drawn up at Christmas, made careful arrangements for the impending regency, and, in particular, was concerned that no one magnate should enjoy supreme power. But this will posed more problems than it could solve for those who sought to take over the control of government, and whose main concern was, therefore, to circumvent Henry’s provisions.

Abstract Since many factors determine the choice of economic policies it is hard to pin down the role that economic analysis plays. One possibility is to see to what extent the work of academic economists is referred to in government documents. Do academic economists provide the reasons-or at least a least a rationale-for the policies that are adopted, or are they just disregarded kibitzers? More specifically, the organizers of this conference have asked me to address the following questions: do academic ideas enter official documents, and if so, how? What happens to them when they are used in official documents? Are they simplified? Is there any pattern to those that are accepted and those that are not? How long does it take for ideas to travel from the journals to official documents?

In this chapter, I review the achievements of those who have been studying torture and interrogation over the last decade. I go through the literature on the supply of torture techniques, the demand for torture, and discussions of tactical and strategic efficacy. I use my book, Torture and Democracy, to frame multifaceted efforts by scholars and practitioners, orienting readers to material elsewhere in this volume and suggesting fruitful connections and debates between them. To be specific, I review the studies of modern torture techniques, their historical origins, and the manner in which they travel; the statistical literature on global and American attitudes toward torture; the social-scientific and policy literature of incorporating coercive techniques into institutional policy, the formation of torture subcultures, and the challenges of prevention. Throughout, I identify how this remarkable body of work has led me to reconsider, correct, or refine claims I made a decade ago.

Abstract Those of my former students who have become community safety practitioners, and seek references from me to support their case for promotion, give prominence in their CVs to central government cash attracted to their Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, not to any crime reductive impact to which such funding may have led (Pease, 2007). This oddity led me to the realization that in one guise or another, funding arrangements reveal the exercise of power in relationships and distinguish the essential from the incidental purposes of those involved. From the parental allocation of pocket money to subsidies under the European Common Agricultural Policy, the basis on which money is disbursed and the form which objections to that disbursement take tell one much about how individuals and groups relate to each other. In 1948, the bulk of the public supported the notion of a National Health Service, but the medical profession, especially its most senior members, did not. Aneurin Bevan’s method for their conversion, famously, was to ‘stuff their mouths with gold’ (see Foot, 1975; Tobias, 1994). Senior consultants in medicine perhaps were (and remain) in a particularly powerful position to open their mouths and expect riches to be available for ingestion. Medical consultants, by dint of their professional prestige and political influence, can make life difficult for governments wishing to constrain their earning power.

Why study future emulations? Some readers of drafts of this book have told me they don’t care much about future worlds where they don’t personally expect to live, unless those worlds contain their children, grandchildren, or especially engaging fictional characters. And I must admit that the scenario I present here may not be especially well suited for dramatic or inspirational stories. But I will note that applying similar standards would declare most of history to also be uninteresting. Yet many of those who express low interest in the future also show great interest in many nooks and crannies of history. Today, we take far more eff ort to study the past than the future, even though we can’t change the past. people often excuse this by saying that we know far more about the past than the future. Yet modest eff orts often give substantial insights into the future, and we would know more about the future if we tried harder to study it. Also, relative to the future, our study of the past has hit diminishing returns; most of the easiest insights about the past have already been found. If policy matters, then the future matters, because policies only affect the future. And unless we are very pessimistic or self-centered time-wise, the distant future matters the most, as with continued growth we expect the vast majority of people to live there. Furthermore, for most intellectuals most of the benefits that result from their policy discussions will happen with long delays; the path from an intellectual having a new policy idea, to publishing an article on it, to someone else reading that article, to that someone gaining policy influence, to them finally finding a chance to try that idea, to the tried policy having consequences, can take decades. If enormous changes will happen over the next decades, policy analyses that ignore such changes may be irrelevant or badly misdirected. It is thus important to try to foresee big upcoming changes, and their likely consequences.

I feel as though my graduate student experiences “preadapted” me to become involved in long-term ecological research. I already enjoyed collaborative research and instantly felt comfortable in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program when I first had the opportunity to work in it. Working on large, collaborative projects offers a great number of opportunities for students and postdoctoral fellows, but their mentors need to ensure that they develop intellectually independent ideas. Giving students and postdoctoral fellows the long-term collaborative view of science while having them develop as fully independent scientists is a balancing act that I try to always keep in mind. The LTER program has led me into an increased level of communication with the public, students, and local and regional level managers and policy-makers. I have found that at every level people are hungry for scientific information, and my interactions with all of them have been extremely rewarding—although challenging. It has forced me to expand my communication skills and work with others who have the gift of science translation. There are costs and benefits to scientific collaboration that change with the size of the project and with one’s level of involvement in the project. Entraining young scientists is a challenge for large-sized projects, such as those in the LTER program. It was 1975 when I and several other beginning graduate students first walked down a short path through the woods to the Great Sippewissett Marsh in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Ahead of me marched my major professor, Ivan Valiela. As we explored the marsh, Ivan pointed out numerous circular plots staked in the grass. These, it turned out, defined the bounds of his fertilization experiments. The grass within some of the plots was distinctly greener and taller compared to others. Ivan began explaining the marsh fertilization experiment that he had begun 5 years earlier with John Teal. He described how the responses of the marsh seemed to differ with the amount of added fertilizer. The community composition of the vegetation had been changing over time.

In this chapter I shall discuss what seems to me to be a systematic ambiguity running through the large and complex risk-assessment literature. The ambiguity concerns the question of separability: can (and ought) risk assessment be separated from the policy values of risk management? Roughly, risk assessment is the process of estimating the risks associated with a practice or substance, and risk management is the process of deciding what to do about such risks. The separability question asks whether the empirical, scientific, and technical questions in estimating the risks either can or should be separated (conceptually or institutionally) from the social, political, and ethical questions of how the risks should be managed. For example, is it possible (advisable) for risk-estimation methods to be separated from social or policy values? Can (should) risk analysts work independently of policymakers (or at least of policy pressures)? The preponderant answer to the variants of the separability question in recent riskresearch literature is no. Such denials of either the possibility or desirability of separation may be termed nonseparatist positions. What needs to be recognized, however, is that advocating a nonseparatist position masks radically different views about the nature of risk-assessment controversies and of how best to improve risk assessment. These nonseparatist views, I suggest, may be divided into two broad camps (although individuals in each camp differ in degree), which I label the sociological view and the metascientific view. The difference between the two may be found in what each finds to be problematic about any attempt to separate assessment and management. Whereas the former (sociological) view argues against separatist attempts on the grounds that they give too small a role to societal (and other nonscientific) values, the latter (metascientific) view does so on the grounds that they give too small a role to scientific and methodological understanding. Examples of those I place under the sociological view are the cultural reductionists discussed in the preceding chapter by Shrader-Frechette. Examples of those I place under the metascientific view are the contributors to this volume themselves. A major theme running through this volume is that risk assessment cannot and should not be separated from societal and policy values (e.g., Silbergeld's uneasy divorce).

Abstract A variety of changes over the past 25 years in women’s lives and basic social institutions in industrial nations, especially trends involving the family, have often been attributed to the effects of feminist activism that began in the late 1960s. My research on women’s movements (Chafetz and Dworkin 1986, 1989) and on changing gender systems (Chafetz 1989, 1990) leads me to conclude that this explanation is simplistic and that a complex relationship exists in industrial nations between macro-structural social change, changes within families, attitudes towards gender and the family, and feminist movement activism. Moreover, the critical linchpin that connects these phenomena is an increase in female labour force participation rates, especially those of married women. Unravelling the processes by which these factors are related to one another leads to a more complex and satisfying intellectual understanding of the role of feminist activism in producing change and provides a potentially cogent basis for strategy development by activists and policy-makers. In this chapter I will explicate a theory of the relationship among increased labour force participation by women, the re-emergence of feminist activism, and certain kinds of family changes, specifically as they occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. This theory draws from and expands upon my prior work with A.G. Dworkin on women’s movements (1986, 1989), and my own work on gender system change (1989, 1990).

I love universities. You just have to look at the posters stuck to walls and notice- boards. They add up to a picture of the good life—invitations to join sports teams, orchestras, social projects, new drama productions, and charity fund-raising stunts; together with public intellectuals giving guest lectures, performances by indie bands, and of course the occasional student protest against some injustice. I was on the receiving end of a few student protests myself over the years when I was minister for universities and science. Sometimes they were quite unpleasant, but usually well-intentioned young people just did not accept what I was trying to do or why. One incident captured what is special about university, even in those unpropitious circumstances. A group of perhaps forty protesters at Southampton University were shouting denunciations of the Coalition’s fees policy. I went over and tried to talk to them but they could not hear my replies so they lent me their loud-hailer to hear my argument better. Then I gave it back so they could broadcast their reply. They returned it to me again and so we carried on the exchanges. Their anger could not suppress their curiosity. It was really rather moving. The university is the institution which, above all, fosters and sustains such intellectual curiosity and openness. The university is the place where everything we think we know can be challenged and where new ideas are generated and transmitted to future generations so they will be better educated than us. A belief in the possibility of progress is one of the exceptional values of Western civilization and universities embody it because they operate at the intellectual frontier. It is why the university is one of the great institutions of the modern world—as important as the democratic legislature, an independent judiciary, or the joint stock company. The first part of the book is about how the university has grown to such importance and why it works the way it does. A medieval concept, the independent corporation, has proved to be extraordinarily well suited to one of the most important eighty-five or so major institutions which already existed in Europe five hundred years ago and still exist now, seventy of them are universities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tremendously difficult for many people across the globe. What was initially viewed as a health crisis affected societies to their core, many of which were already grappling with the devastating effects of climate change, as well as other challenges such as political instability and conflict. While each of these crises has its own identifiable causes, the increasingly interconnected nature of our world means that these shocks or hazards and the knock-on effects from them cannot be viewed in isolation. Indeed, the number of record-breaking disasters witnessed over the past years and their cascading effects across sectors and borders have illuminated those interconnections as never before. Similarly, interconnections became very visible whenCOVID-19 started to spread around the globe. The unfolding pandemic prompted a range of policy measures to limit the spread of the virus and avoid health systems becoming overwhelmed. Yet the effects of these measures, including stay-at-ho-me orders and shutdown of public life, while highly important to prevent health system collapse and reduce COVID-19 fatalities, hit the most vulnerable the hardest. Underlying vulnerabilities such as poverty, precarious jobs in the informal economy, lack of access to education and, structural gender biases were exacerbated by the pandemic. This report sheds light on the complexity of risks in a highly interconnected world, and present lessons for risk management. Focusing on COVID-19, it shows how, through the interconnectedness of societies and the underlying vulnerabilities within them, the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic have revealed the systemic nature of risk. Through a case study approach, it demonstrates how the pandemic triggered a multitude of impacts far beyond the direct health crisis, including joblessness, debt, civil and domestic violence and the derailment of their children’s education, among many others. In many locations, women suffered disproportionately, whether as a result of bias in employment patterns or other pre-existing gender biases in society. Drawing on insights from different case studies across the world, this report also offers lessons from the pandemic for understanding risk more systemically, and presents recommendations for risk management moving forward.