This chapter delves into the concept of legitimacy and introduces the readers to key debates on regulatory legitimacy. The concept of legitimacy has been extensively studied by scholars from various academic disciplines, including political theory, legal theory, political science, sociology and management studies. The resulting body of scholarship has, however, tended to remain in disciplinary siloes, making the study of legitimacy difficult to navigate. Chapter 11 offers first an exploration of different legitimacy claims that justify why individuals recognize an authority and its rules as legitimate. The chapter then moves to regulatory legitimacy.

There are many different types of regulatory instruments and tools. Chapter 6 classifies and examines regulatory tools according to their underlying technique or ‘modality’ of control or source of influence, examining five such modalities in turn: command, competition, communication, consensus and code (or ‘architecture’). This chapter also considers algorithmic regulation and the role of reputation as a form of regulation.

The feeling of shame (aischunē) is a dramatic key of the Gorgias, notably revealed by Callicles, who accuses both the master of rhetoric Gorgias and Polus of surrendering to Socrates’ refutation out of shame, before yielding himself to the feeling he declared himself immune to. But shame is not only a literary pattern in the dialogue: its function is closely connected to the kind of refutation of each interlocutor. It can be minimally said that shame is a natural effect of refutation, and optimally that it is an essential lever for Socrates to make his interlocutors acknowledge their deep moral commitments. This chapter aims at distinguishing several levels, rather than kinds, of shame among the interlocutors of the Gorgias: shame as sensitivity to others’ opinion, shame as an indication of the beliefs and values we are committed to, and shame as a potential step towards a better understanding of the real good. Though these levels sometimes overlap in the narrative, such distinctions may aid in understanding the role of shame for each interlocutor. Shame remains, for Plato, an ambiguous emotion, which must be used in a certain way to perform purification of wrong opinions.

This chapter discusses the six standards of a good market theory. A good market theory must be able to explain how humanity can cooperate in the extended order based on division of labor. It must explain how the reputation mechanism works in promoting human cooperation. A good market theory should be a theory about how the economy develops and changes, not only a theory about how the market reaches equilibrium and stability. Entrepreneurship is the soul of the market economy. Without entrepreneurs, a true orderly market is not possible, and neither is true progress. A good market theory must be able to explain economic fluctuations and business cycles. Economic fluctuations and business cycles are related to entrepreneurial decisions and innovations. A good market theory should be of rights-priority (putting rights above interests) rather than utilitarian (putting interests above rights). In terms of all these standards, neoclassical economics is not a good theory of the market.

Chapter 3 is a summary of the theoretical concepts that lead to the logic to grant independence to central banks, ways to measure CBI and its empirical effects on price stability. We show that different schools of thought (Chicago, Virginia, Freiburg) come to similar conclusions, although their methodological starting points are very different.

How did polities interact in the Archaic and Classical periods, and which norms influenced their behaviour? This chapter aims to answer these questions. By moving away from the dominant Realist interpretation of ancient history, and employing a variety of themes that played a role in neighbourly relations, a fresh and different understanding of neighbourly diplomatic interactions emerges. Four norms are investigated; first, the decision to go to war or avoid that possibility; second, friendship ties; third, reciprocity; and fourth, reputation. By analysing the reasoning behind the breakdown of neighbourly relations, it will become that clear political actors frequently sought ways to restore the status quo and peaceful co-existence. A second factor is the friendship ties between leaders and how this influenced the direction of the neighbours vis-à-vis one another. The third aspect is reciprocity, and how this formed a staple of neighbourly relations and could be called upon to reinforce neighbourly ties. Finally, the notions of reputation and trust are investigated to show that the reputation of a polis influenced neighbourly relations, whether positively or negatively. Earlier behaviour, such as abandoning an alliance, impacted decision-making and required significant efforts to restore the trust between the neighbours.

The tort of defamation protects the reputation of individuals in society. A cause of action arises where one individual publishes a false matter about another that lowers the reputation of the latter in the eyes of ordinary and reasonable members of the society. While many of the torts covered in this book seek to protect the bodily integrity of individuals, the tort of defamation seeks to protect their reputation. Defamation laws are concerned with balancing freedom of speech with the protection of individuals’ reputation, character and standing in the community. The increased use of social media has a significant role to play in defamation, with the speed and ease of publication on the internet creating new sites for defamation action. Additionally, the emergence of novel technologies and methods of sharing defamatory posts online – such as hashtags, emojis and memes – have raised novel questions about application of traditional defamation principles to the modern technological landscape. This makes defamation a highly relevant tort in contemporary society.

Chapter 2 discusses the literature, the cost-balancing theory, observable implications, alternative explanations, measurement, and research design. Coercion is the use or threats of negative means to demand a change in the behavior of a target state. The underlying assumption of this book is that in an era of global economic interdependence through the intricate global supply chains and global financial network, coercion decisions are a result of balancing security and economic factors. China coerces when the need to establish a reputation for resolve is high and the economic cost is low. China will refrain from coercion when the economic cost is high and the need to establish resolve is low. In circumstances when both the need to establish resolve and economic costs are high, China will only use coercion when the importance of the issue at hand is high. As for the choices of coercion, all else being equal, nonmilitary coercion should generate lower geopolitical backlash. China is much more likely to choose nonmilitary coercive tools like diplomatic sanctions, economic sanctions, and gray-zone coercion when the geopolitical backlash is high.

Regulators are different from elected officials because regulators are not motivated by electoral incentives. But then, what motivates regulators? This chapter makes the case that all regulators are motivated by a desire to uphold and increase their reputation for technical expertise. In addition, political appointees are accountable to the elected officials who have the power to remove them.

This chapter argues that protecting rights in a constitutional democracy is a collaborative enterprise between all three branches of government, where each branch has a distinct but complementary role to play, whilst working together with the other branches in the constitutional scheme. At the heart of the chapter is a collaborative conception of the separation of powers, where the branches are situated within a heterarchical relationship of reciprocity, recognition, and respect. Grounded in the key values of comity, collaboration, and conflict management, this chapter sketches out the contours of the collaborative constitution. Instead of a conflictual dynamic of ’constitutional showdowns’, the chapter marks out a preference for ’constitutional slowdowns’. Whilst accepting the inevitability and, indeed, the legitimacy of constitutional counterbalancing and tension between the branches of government, the collaborative constitution attends to the collaborative norms which frame and shape the interaction between the branches in a well-functioning constitutional order.

We have been reading Gulliver’s Travels for nearly 300 years, and we have been arguing about it just as long. The history of the critical reception of Swift’s masterpiece begins as soon as the book was published, when Swift was charged with indecency and misanthropy, though he has always had defenders as well as detractors, a situation that continued into the nineteenth century. In the Victorian period, Gulliver was often sanitised through abridgement, especially in versions for children. In the twentieth century, Gulliver’s Travels has been the subject of numerous lines of academic enquiry, including criticism that focuses on its sources and generic identity; on its employment of rhetoric and irony in service of satire; on feminism and sexuality; on colonialism and politics; and on the histories of science, philosophy, and religion.

The first chapter explores an area of entrepreneurship in which China in many ways leads the world. As well as considering e-commerce in general the chapter highlights some particularly Chinese innovations. The relevance of social embeddedness to online communication and interaction is widely acknowledged. In addition, there are now many studies which explore how online networks are affected by offline networks. Sociological research on e-commerce nevertheless remains underdeveloped. Little is known about how individuals participating in e-commerce markets take initiatives in creating, expanding, and maintaining online social networks behind the screen. Chapter 1 identifies forms of social embeddedness that while obscure are important to online markets. The chapter develops a concept, ‘personalized anchoring reputation’, in highlighting this phenomenon. Additionally, analysis is presented of an e-sales approach, called by its practitioners ‘fission’, which integrates characteristics of face-to-face transaction with online exchanges.

Output is higher when individuals cooperate and combine their inputs in some type of production. This exposes the attributes of their inputs to other people. Since contracts and agreements cannot prevent overuse of someone elses attributes, transaction costs arise in every form of human production interaction. Specific contracts are designed to mitigate this problem.

This chapter examines the effects that individual leaders have in shaping foreign policy, including decisions for war. It first presents general international relations debates about whether international structure makes leaders irrelevant, or if instead leaders can make a difference. It then examines regular and irregular processes by which leaders can come to power. Then it describes how differences among leaders might translate into different patterns of foreign policy decisionmaking, including differences regarding beliefs and ideology, background experiences, sex and gender, personal health, and age. It also examines how variance in domestic politics – including the role of political parties, bureaucracy, and the firmness of a leader’s hold on power – can affect how and whether leaders can affect foreign policy choices, The chapter also discusses other concepts and debates, including the diversionary theory of war and whether reputation resides in leaders or in states. It then applies several of these concepts to a quantitative study on whether leaders who are former rebels are more likely to acquire nuclear weapons, and a case study on leaders and the causes of World War I.

What are the underlying challenges that create the climate impasse? This chapter explains why compensation and investments that are supposed to facilitate a clean energy transition face credibility challenges. These challenges arise from various sources, such as today’s government cannot perfectly control what tomorrow’s government does, and uncertainty about whether the government represents the interests of people and communities impacted by policy reforms. Finally, we argue that new industries might be seen as providing few local economic benefits. In light of these challenges, we propose solutions to create credibility and build support for the energy transition.