In this chapter we envision the possible futures of the African buffalo populations in Africa by reflecting on the regional and international factors and their relationships that could positively or negatively impact the healthiness of the buffalo species in the next 30 years. Using the expertise of the authors of this book, we drafted and validated a list of factors of change that could impact the futures of African buffalo populations on the continent and use a set of prospective methods, i.e. structural analysis, critical uncertainty matrix and morphological analysis to develop seven synopses which provided caricatural African contexts within which the consequences for African buffalo populations could be imagined. In 2050, the futures of the African buffalo will vary according to each country specific social, technical, economic, environmental, political and value contexts. In a context of climate change that will impact increasingly the environmental contexts in Africa, good futures for buffalo were often associated with political stability and good governance. The proportion of African living in cities will also be important. The ratio of urban versus rural African will not only determine the intensity of the agricultural pressure on land but also the African worldviews towards nature and its conservation. The influence of non-African states will also be determinant, especially in extractive industries and their request for land. A pivotal factor is the conservation models that will prevail in 2050: to what extent they are still influenced and constrained by part of the Western opinion; to what extent they are funded by them; and to what extent African worldviews push for the design of new conservation models based on different relationship between people and nature. Probably, landscapes associating land-sparing (e.g. national parks) and land-sharing management options, based on the sustainable use of natural resources will provide the best futures for buffalo to thrive on the continent.

Among the requirements of a liberal order is the ability to pursue collective goals through enduring private organizations. Such organizations contribute to political checks and balances, which sustain individual freedoms. In the Islamic Middle East, a possible starting point for autonomous nonstate organizations was the Islamic waqf, a trust that an individual formed under Islamic law to provide designated social services in perpetuity. Waqfs came to control vast resources. They might have used their enormous wealth to constrain the state and advance the freedoms of their constituents. The resulting decentralization of power could have placed the Middle East on the road to liberalization and perhaps also democratization. However, despite their immense wealth, waqfs remained politically powerless. A key reason is that they were governed according to their deeds, not the preferences of their caretakers or beneficiaries. In these respects, Islamic waqfs differed from European corporations, which were self-governing organizations enjoying legal personhood. In the Middle East, waqfs supplied services that the corporation provided in Western Europe. For instance, whereas churches and universities operated as corporations, mosques and madrasas (Islamic colleges) were financed by waqfs. This institutional difference contributed to the interregional divergence in political patterns.

The transition to globalized knowledge economies in recent decades have accelerated economic and social change across the globe.1 European democracies have been no exception to these developments. They have experienced rapid structural changes to their economies, increased social inequality, new social cleavages (see, for example, Chapter 11) and growing ethnic diversity resulting from migration. These changes have had political repercussions, including growing support for politically extreme challenger parties and the rise of populist political entrepreneurs in many countries (Iversen and Soskice 2019; Proaño, Peña and Saalfeld 2019; de Vries and Hobolt 2020). Some authors have even argued that the nature of partisan conflict itself has changed. While traditionally most European party systems were dominated by a socio-economic conflict between left-wing parties supporting tax-funded expansion of the welfare state and Keynesian economic policy and right-wing parties advocating a free-market economy (Laver and Hunt 1992), new voter coalitions have emerged (Hillen and Steiner 2019) and, in some cases, new challenger parties have been found to exploit a new ‘universalism-particularism’ dimension in political conflict (Häusermann and Kriesi 2015). Where it has become politically relevant, this additional dimension of conflict has added further complexity to political competition in European democracies.

This chapter shows how partisan stability enabled police professionalization and the regulation of drug trafficking through coordinated coexistence in São Paulo. Following redemocratization in the early 1980s, São Paulo exhibited, like Rio de Janeiro, incoherent and unstable security policies that perpetuated the autonomy of a police force characterized by rampant corruption and brutality. However, the entrenchment of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) since the mid-1990s enabled it to implement and consolidate various initiatives to professionalize the police and reduce their autonomy. This in turn enabled a coordinated coexistence arrangement, including an implicit pact with the state’s most powerful drug gang: the First Command of the Capital (PCC). While the government has allowed this organization to expand its power in the prisons and the streets, the gang has mitigated police violence and maintained homicide rates in São Paulo among the lowest in the country.

This chapter proposes a theory of legal instrumentalism – contextually, a more explanatory framework than either Marxist or Confucian legal theories – to explain the function and role of law in Chinese society. This kind of instrumentalism, which differs from the debate over this theory in the Anglo-American tradition, is situated in China’s authoritarian regime, where a primary concern is the maintenance of political stability through strengthening authoritarian legality for the ruler. On this premise, economic development, as well as other social goals – such as efficiency of the government – for which the law can undoubtedly be placed in an instrumental position may become a priority in the ruler’s political agenda. When it comes to dispute resolution, the primary matter of concern is not the achievement of the formalist justice of Western tradition via either a formal or informal process but rather the settlement of disputes for which the law primarily plays a facilitative role as a tool, regardless of what strategies it may use. Instrumentalism of this kind, which is suitable for Chinese society both culturally and historically, shows that law is visible and does matter in China, although it cannot be completely understood through the lens of other legal traditions.

If a just and well-ordered political community is integral to the good for an individual, then it would seem incumbent on the architectonic legislator and prudent statesperson to aim at the optimal condition of the polis and hence to reform defective regimes and laws. The normative structure of Aristotle’s constitutional theory – with its conception of the best regime as an ideal and appeal to the common advantage as a central criterion for distinguishing correct and defective constitutions – likewise suggests a progressive stance towards correction of political injustice. The overall attitude towards the reform of constitutions and laws which emerges from the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics is nonetheless cautious and conservative. In the current chapter I consider the motivations for this circumspection and argue that it reflects both the importance of habituation to the effective functioning of law and a recognition of the limits of law’s capacity to promote virtue and human flourishing. Section 1 engages in a close reading of Aristotle’s treatment of the advantages and disadvantages of legal reform in the Politics Book II.8 discussion of Hippodamus’ legislative proposal to honour innovation. In section 2, I examine Aristotle’s account of constitutional change and stability in light of his theory of ethical virtue. Finally, in section 3, I turn to political obedience and argue for its dual justification within Aristotle’s practical thought.