This chapter discusses the emergence of the Cold War, the containment policy, and the Cold War consensus (and its challenges) that were developed against the expansion of international communism.

This chapter attempts to answer two questions. First, what does democratic education informed by critical theory minimally entail? Second, what does it take for a critical democratic education to succeed? The chapter argues that attention to local contexts is a necessary aspect for developing critical and democratic virtues. The chapter first sets the stage by offering a sketch of both democratic education and critical theory. The following section draws out a common occluding characteristic of both democratic education and critical education, namely, their preoccupation with national and global scopes. The next two sections draw on the work of Iris Murdoch and John McDowell to argue that cultivating moral attention to one’s local setting must be seen as an essential aspect of critical democratic education. The chapter concludes by offering brief educational applications and responses to objections related to objectivity and the threat of parochialism.

Chapter 9 explores the recent re-politicisation of religion in France in more detail and finds that it was less linked to a revival of Catholicism than to the emergence of a new identity cleavage in French society, which itself is partly rooted in France’s rapid secularisation and Catholicism’s demise. Under the pressure of this new identity divide between cosmopolitans and communitarians, France’s political system has undergone a fundamental transformation, leading to a new bipolarity between the liberal-cosmopolitan camp of Macron’s La République en Marche and the populist-communitarian camp around the Rassemblement National and Éric Zemmour.

The Introduction sets the scene, formulates the questions the book will seek to answer and provides a brief overview of the general argument. It begins by taking the reader through an exploration of the paradoxical expressions of the relationship between right-wing populism and religion within Western democracies in recent years, laying the foundation for the way in which the book will challenge several widespread assumptions about the role religion has to play in populist politics today. During this foundational stage, the four guiding questions that structure and drive the thesis of the book are thus established: What are the social and demographic roots behind the rise of right populist movements and their new brand of identity politics in Western democracies? How and why does religion feature in right-wing populist rhetoric and strategies? How do Christian communities react to national populists’ religiously laden rhetoric? And what is the role of mainstream parties and religious leaders in shaping the relationship between religion and right-wing populism? After establishing these question, the book proceeds to briefly outlining the books general argument and overall structure.

Chapter 5 discusses how in the context of Germanys historically religion-friendly settlement of benevolent neutrality, the rise of the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its references to religion have represented a political and religious watershed moment. Specifically, Chapter 5 focuses on how the emergence of a new identity cleavage in German society has created the socio-demographic conditions and incentives for the AfD’s rise and the latter’s transformation from an anti-Euro ‘professors’ party’ into an identitarian right-wing populist party. It also explores how the AfDs re-politicisation of religion in the context of its right-wing populist identity politics has put into question Germany’s traditional settlement of benevolent neutrality.

Chapter 3 examines Streit’s wartime activities on behalf of Federal Union, which included efforts to build a national movement with local chapters. The difficulties encountered offer another perspective on grassroots political mobilization, one that calls into question arguments that surge local activism at the time. The chapter also considers Streit’s involvement with the Commission to Study the Organization of the Peace (CSOP), a semi-official grouping that played a key role in designing and championing the UNO as a pillar of postwar US internationalism. Streit’s unwillingness to collaborate meaningfully with the CSOP left him with inadequate means either to promote his own project or to counter the appropriation of federalism for other ends.

Global policymaking is fundamentally political: the assumption that “if only people could agree, then we would live in a better world” makes for a deeply problematic starting point for the analysis of global governance. Any collective course of action is bound to favor some groups more than others, and to embody a particular vision of the common good at the expense of alternative perspectives. Focusing on social conflict as the engine of global governance helps us to bring politics to the fore, not as a hindrance but as the natural condition of society – global or otherwise. In any policymaking process, power dynamics and unequal participation ultimately remain; however, inclusive contemporary global practices claim to be. Likewise, the competing value systems and ideologies that structure global policymaking can never be fully arbitrated by objective and neutral means. We connect our framework and cases to the broader politics of global governance, identifying two basic cleavages between globalists and sovereigntists, on one hand, and between issue-specific Leftist versus Rightist positions. This impressionistic overview has the advantage of showing how global policymaking, far from floating in a political void, is in fact embedded in a broader fabric of social conflict.

The invention of money was one of the major factor that allowed governments, corporations, and individuals to consolidate power. This chapter reviews the history of money and its various forms. The globalized economy depends on the free flow of money, and trade is an enormous source of wealth and power. Trading economies have proven to be stronger and more flexible across history, and is the source of various power centers throughout history: the Mediterranean Middle East, the European West, modern China, etc. have all been made powerful through trade, whereas isolationists have found themselves at strong disadvantages. The pursuit of trading wealth has been the source of wars and social conflicts, as well as the spread of colonialism and chattel slavery. Disparities of power and wealth due to the economic power of the global economy continue to this day. However, globalization has also created enormous benefits for many populations around the world. Worldwide, literacy has increased and longer lifespans are the result of access to modern medicines and health care.

Homeless squatting on empty land is a local challenge, replicated on a world-wide scale. While some have argued that neoliberal globalization has had a homogenizing effect on domestic legal systems generally, and on states’ responses to squatting more specifically, domestic institutions retain significant capacity and capability to govern; and their resilience critically determines economic success and political stability and nation-states adapt to changing circumstances. This chapter frames our analyses of state responses to homeless squatting on empty land in the context of nation state norms and narratives: what we describe – adapting Robert Cover – as the property “nomos” of each jurisdiction. We argue that state responses to squatting are framed by the “foundational” regime goals through which the state’s role and relationships to citizens with respect to property were articulated and understood, and examine how these foundational goals with respect to private property, housing and citizenship emerged in each of the five primary jurisdictions from which we draw insights and illustrations in this book: the United States of America, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, and England and Wales. In doing so, we aim to better understand how domestic institutions, norms and narratives in each of these jurisdictions have shaped the nomos within which “the state” acts in response to homeless squatting on empty land.

While the Cold War provides a clear basis for context when reading DeLillo's Underworld, events of the twenty-first century, after the novel's publication, also offer insight into our shifting understanding of the novel and the Cold War itself.

The world and the globe are digital and inscriptive events. Before the advent of digital media in its narrow sense, conceptions of humanity presuppose a shared globe and horizon of sense; this presupposed harmony requires various technical systems that also threaten to produce an entropic dissolution. If globalism is the assumed common horizon of sense, hyperglobalism promises the destruction of communalism and the possibility of other worlds.

Chapter 18 analyzes his work after his retirement in Rotterdam, in particular, on international governance. The first part of the chapter demonstrates that in response to frustrated attempts to further integrate the international community, Tinbergen became more radical and ambitious. He promoted a global government and international order along the lines of the developments that had taken place at the national level. He became more critical of the short-sightedness of both political leaders and voters and grew more critical of democracy. The second part of the chapter analyzes the underlying perspective of Tinbergen about the fallibility of man and the need for economic order. His view of humans is shaped by his Protestant, in particular, Remonstrant, beliefs, and he believed that (economic) order in the form of rules and institutions was required because humans are flawed. Harmony and peace must be actively constructed. The chapter suggests that next to a deep-seated sense of responsibility there is an element of fear in Tinbergen’s outlook. In his later works these fears and worries come more into the foreground, and he became pessimistic about the future, but he tried to remain hopeful.

The book ends with an epilogue on the COVID-19 pandemic that upended the world, causing massive loss of life and socio-economic devastation, as we were finishing our book. We present empirical evidence from our latest national survey in March 2020 on the role group empathy plays in reactions to the pandemic. Group empathy is the leading predictor of support for coronavirus-related foreign aid, above and beyond partisanship, ideology, feelings about whites versus blacks, political news exposure, and other key factors. As a discriminant validity check, we also analyzed the effect of group empathy on concern about oneself or a family member getting ill with the coronavirus disease. The results corroborate that the effect of group empathy we observe on support for coronavirus relief to foreign nations is not a product of concern about the COVID-19 pandemic getting worse elsewhere and eventually coming back to infect the respondents themselves. It is about concern for others. Further consistent with our theory, the association between group empathy and support for coronavirus-related foreign aid is much stronger among nonwhites as compared to whites. We conclude with a discussion about the power of empathy to improve intergroup relations in the post–COVID-19 world.

This chapter considers the intersection of Gothic and Orientalism in the long eighteenth century from the joint perspective of its origins and ideological relevance. Having traced the influence on Gothic of literary materials imported from the East, it examines the terrifying effects of commercial and imperial concerns in works such as William Beckford’s Vathek, Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, Matthew Gregory Lewis’s ‘The Anaconda’, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. The relevance of this commercial and imperial imaginary for figurations of subjectivity, the body and sexuality is then explored with reference to George Colman’s Blue-Beard, Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama, Byron’s ‘Turkish Tales’, Walter Scott’s ‘The Surgeon’s Daughter’ and the anonymous novel The Lustful Turk. Through its double focus, the chapter argues that, if the East is a foundational feature in early Gothic, the troubling power of Orientalist Gothic depends on distance and alienness, though also, and more perturbingly, on the proximity and contact promoted by an expanding commercial and territorial imperialism.

Expectations of the global harmonization of patent law are commonplace in legal literature. Historical writing on national patent systems, however, reveal their persistent specificities to national economic and cultural needs. These two narratives are not easy to reconcile, and the cessation in 2010 of the World Intellectual Property Office’s efforts to reconcile patent laws suggests that the diversity is the prevalent phenomenon. The reasons for this include the diverse rationales of patents in terms of: the “natural” rights of inventors; the social rewards for useful inventions; investments in the risky future of industrial progress; and the incentives required to encourage inventors to share private knowledge. Compounding this complexity is the way that historically libertarian cultures have privileged the rights of the inventor, whereas cultures cherishing strong government have focused on the needs of the state. While some systems have focused on the importance of novelty, others have focused on the utility of an invention – and not all national Patent Offices are formally required to examine patent applications for such qualities. The resilient diversity of patent systems can thus be understood as part of a multiplicity of contingent “social contracts” of protecting invention that are subject to local more than global forces.

This chapter begins by outlining some of the principles that guide the work of engaged theory. We then elaborate these principles to show how engaged theory can be understood as a form of critical theory. Engaged theory is critical, but not for criticism’s sake. It is committed to making a positive difference in the world. By mapping the complexity of our world—locally and globally—our approach is intended to contribute to the process of engaging sensitively and practically with that world. By recognizing the messiness of that world while drawing out broad patterns of practice and meaning, it provides a new way of understanding that complexity. The chapter shows how our approach works across different levels of analysis to discern patterns of practice and meaning. It responds to five key questions. First, how should globalization be conceptualized? Second, should globalization be equated with material interconnectivity? Third, what dominant forms has globalization assumed throughout history? Fourth, what is the relationship between globalization and relations of power, domination, and subjection? And fifth, what is the relationship of globalization theory to social practice?