Public spaces, as places of consumption, are windows onto unequal economic structures. In this chapter, I discuss different aspects of real and perceived inequalities in Tehran. I demonstrate that massive structural changes, such as the expansion of infrastructure and public transportation, have facilitated access to different parts of Tehran and a more equal experience of the city, yet different forms of inequality persist and are reproduced. Many public spaces offer a variety of opportunities for using space, ranging from walking in a public park to eating in high-end restaurants, all in very close proximity. Depending on what can be consumed and where it happens, public spaces bring inequalities to the fore as different groups often segregate within the same public space, following patterns that usually correlate with their ability to pay for products and services. Thus, in Tehran, as much as urban development may appear to work as an equalizer – bringing different socioeconomic groups together in newly shared public spaces – it highlights economic and social inequalities and makes disparities even more visible.

This chapter makes four historical interventions. First, It argues that the relief program of the Ottoman central state during the continuum of crisis aimed to maintain agriculture, cities, and the army, but not pastoralists. Although pastoralists lost millions of herd animals, their source of food, financial capital, and sociopolitical power, available historical documents indicate that the Hamidian government did not distribute grain or flocks to pastoralists, and neither did they lend money to rebuild their herds, as they did for peasants. It is unclear whether this was a deliberate policy of the state in order to turn pastoralists into taxable agriculturalists. What is clear is that the traditional Ottoman famine relief policies contributed to mounting ecological and economic disequilibrium between peasants and pastoralists in times of crises and to irreversibly expanding this imbalance in the political ecology of Kurdistan in the post-crises period by triggering displacement, migration, and proletarianization among pastoralist communities.

Chapter 4 investigates if whites apply an “anger penalty” to a Black politician relative to a white politician. We examine if an angry Black Democrat politician is racially handicapped among racially prejudiced whites. We test our predictions using several survey experiments on adult national samples of whites. We uncover evidence of an anger penalty in that racially prejudiced whites evaluate an angry Black Democrat politician more unfavorably than a non-angry Black Democrat politician and an angry white Democrat politician. Additionally, we find a similar effect among whites oriented to supporting group-based social hierarchies (i.e., having a social dominance orientation). In another study, we examine if this anger penalty depends on the issue. We expect an anger penalty is greater when the issue implicates Black Americans than if it is unrelated to the group. The findings show that racially prejudiced whites penalize a Black politician only when the anger is related to a racialized issue and not when the issue is unrelated to race. In our final experimental study, we examine whether a Black female politician’s anger is treated differently than a Black male’s; the anger penalty does not appear to be conditioned on gender.

This chapter starts by delimiting the scope of the book and making clear that we focus on various types of domestic political violence but that international wars are touched upon as well. We clearly define these terms and provide examples that illustrate the differences between distinct forms of violence, before moving to a discussion of the costs that these forms of violence impose on society. Strikingly, some people believe that wars and conflicts are good business. They are not. This chapter shows that wars not only destroy millions of innocent lives, but they are also poison for the economy. In particular, wars may be lucrative for the few but disastrous for the many. The detriments of war are manifold and include human, economic and social costs. This is illustrated by a series of historical examples. Drawing on recent cost estimates, it is also shown that the costs of a given war spread well beyond the borders of the country at war, with continental if not worldwide consequences.

This chapter explores the role of three global economic institutions (GEIs) in contemporary economic governance: the International Monetary Fund, (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). GEIs are key components of global economic governance, and their activities are central to the pursuit of accountability, efficiency and equity in the global economy. The impact of GEIs on states and societies is complex and widely varying assessments of the performance of these organisations can be found in the literature. Given the absence of theoretical consensus on the roles and functions of GEIs, the first part of the chapter examines competing perspectives on international organisations.

In this chapter, we define a communication strategy for the 2022 Brazilian presidential election using public opinion inputs. We ask a simple question – what is the winning message?

To do this, we deploy polling results from three 2,000 interview face-to-face polls and a battery of focus groups. These are what we call a benchmark, designed to identify key message themes and other public opinion inputs. To assess the campaign in course, we will analyze about 40,900 interviews conducted during 152 days of tracking. Note that we did not work for any campaign in Brazil. But we polled for private sector clients who wanted to understand and predict the election. In that capacity, we used our polling to mimic campaign dynamics in order to assess their relative effectiveness.

Paul Johnson began his relationship with the series with his analysis of Conservative economic policy in The Coalition Effect and will return, with his team, to his conclusions then, analysing not just the first period of austerity but also how Conservative economic policy has evolved through the post-referendum premierships of Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

Over the last quarter-century, the relations between Australia and Latin America, while not intense, clearly have thickened and deepened. And the pace of this thickening and deepening is quickening. The most obvious manifestation is in the economic realm, in trade and investment. But our research indicates that in more obscure areas, such as cultural exchange, education, and environmental issues, much is happening and there is every reason to expect that the contact will expand. That said, any informed observer of Australia’s relations with Latin America would be struck by how little each knows about the other, how recent and relatively superficial the contacts are, and consequently how tenuous they could remain unless both the Australians and the Latin Americans invest further substantial effort. This effort cannot be limited to the material – trade and investment – but must include education at all levels to overcome the barriers of language and culture, of limited transport, of competing economies, of stereotypes.

Australia’s relationship with China in the period 2006–10 developed in a paradoxical manner. While the relationship grew deeper, became more broadly based and assumed unprecedented prominence for both countries, it also became exceedingly complicated, controversial and difficult to manage. During this period, China’s vital importance to Australia’s economy was further affirmed. China displaced Japan to become Australia’s largest trading partner and its biggest export market, a position that had been held by Japan for almost 40 years. Burgeoning trade ties with China not only shielded Australia from the global financial crisis that afflicted most of the Western economies from 2007 but also continued to underwrite Australia’s resources boom. During the years 2006 to 2007, the Coalition government led by John Howard continued its successful China diplomacy and strengthened the bilateral relationship, attaining a level and scope unmatched in any other period.

Beginning with the floating of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997, a regional crisis unfolded that saw the magic disappear from the economies of East Asia. What appeared initially to be merely the sharp devaluation of a single currency turned into an economic free-fall that rippled across neighbouring economies and eventually the entire region. By early September 1997, the Malaysian ringgit had fallen to its lowest level against the US dollar since 1971; in the space of six months the Thai stock-market had lost 38 per cent of its value; Malaysia’s lost 44 per cent, the Philippines’ lost 35 per cent; Indonesia’s lost 17 per cent; and Japan’s lost 4 per cent. By year’s end, the Indonesian and South Korean economies had been brought to their knees, and speculation had begun that East Asia would drag the global economy into a bout of chronic deflation.

Until the tragic events of 4 June 1989 in Beijing, the 1980s saw a substantial broadening and strengthening of Sino–Australian relations, building on the foundations that had been laid in the previous decade and responding to the economic changes taking place in both countries. It was a good working relationship which enjoyed bipartisan support in Australia. While its emphasis was on commercial and economic interests, it was diverse, multifaceted and broadly-based within a cooperative framework, the result of sustained efforts and single-mindedness on the part of successive Australian governments. These efforts, begun by the Whitlam administration in the 1970s, were made on the ground that building productive links with a developing socialist country like China required official initiatives, professionalism and a whole range of skills. Traditionally Australia relied on largely non-official entities to establish and foster its external relations in the economic, commercial and cultural spheres. In the case of China, it was considered necessary to engage Beijing at the official level and to develop strategies with the expectation that this would facilitate non-official contacts.

Physical security, economic well-being and preservation of the political culture remain the first three foreign policy priorities of any sophisticated national government, and opportunities to make sweeping changes to policy in the pursuit of those interests are relatively rare, especially for a minor power.Nevertheless, within a rapidly changing external environment, policy priorities can shift and the quality of a nation’s diplomacy in defending those policies can rise and fall with the passage of Cabinets, foreign ministers and ambassadors. This volume traces changes and continuity in Australian external relations through the 1980s. Some of its authors also attempt evaluations of Australian policy and diplomacy through those years, though success and failure in the arena of current or very recent external policies is not easily measurable – except on such stark and dramatic occasions as a country’s subjugation by a foreign invader or the crippling of a national economy by pressure of external events.