Agape-justice conflicts can arise from unattended past wrongs and previous disequilibria in socioeconomic homeostasis. We see this both in theory and in practice. This is sometimes called “prior-fault” moral dilemmas. There is an important time- and place-utility to the claims of justice and agape. These dues have multiple dimensions that must be satisfied simultaneously: giving the right claim, the right amount, at the right time, to the right recipient, from the right payer, at the right place, and in the right manner. Deficiencies in any of these contribute to disequilibria in the delicate socioeconomic homeostasis.

Patronage is present in the Asian countries examined in this collection. Several factors influence the extent and type of patronage. More institutionalised or stable party systems may be more effective in organising patronage on a partisan basis. If social structure is a strong influencing factor on patronage, then one would expect to see country studies identifying loyalty to clan, tribe or ethnic group. In fact, few countries claimed social structure as the dominant mode of patronage. We anticipated that political regime types were important in explaining patronage. The evidence across Asian countries is somewhat nuanced. Appointees in highly developed countries are more likely to be chosen for their public policy expertise than political loyalty. The evidence of the link between path dependency and political patronage is mixed. These studies of patronage in a range of Asian countries demonstrate both similarities and differences in how these appointments are used within governments. Although some countries attempt to disguise the existence of patronage, it does exist in some form. Despite its ubiquity, patronage manifests itself in different forms, and to differing degrees.

This chapter argues for a concept of ’roundabout reasoning’ as a useful tool for comparative legal studies for the movement and adaptation of legal objects, in understanding domestic law, and in critiquing legal development. Roundabout reasoning is defined as a process to resolve potential conflict between two or more objects by (a) a simple method of sequencing their consideration; (b) where actors apply it autonomously; and (c) consideration takes place through a neutral third space without reference to their earlier state.

This is a book about state institutions, political ideology, and the patterns of interaction between the two. It argues, first and foremost, that ideological belief systems imposed unusually deep and powerful constraints on fiscal policymaking and institutions throughout the final two centuries of China’s imperial history. These ideological constraints explain many of the Qing Dynasty’s unique fiscal weaknesses, which eventually had ruinous sociopolitical and economic consequences. Scholars of economic and institutional history have, for the past several decades, distanced themselves from cultural and ideological analysis, but some core features of late imperial Chinese fiscal history cannot be plausibly explained without it. The challenge here is to reintroduce ideology in such a way that makes sense of the Qing’s political and intellectual idiosyncrasies, relative to both other Chinese dynasties and other early modern Eurasian regimes, while also fluidly interacting with the numerous nonideological forces at work in its fiscal politics and institutions.

Chapter 6 takes the narrative from the Taiping Rebellion and its aftermath to the end of the dynasty. By the mid-nineteenth century, the traditional moral consensus that state taxation was inherently wrong had largely crumbled, and many of the most prominent statesmen in the country now openly embraced a new, pro-government investment mode of thinking. Nonagricultural taxes almost immediately began to expand rapidly once the Taiping Rebellion flared up in 1851, and continued to rise after it had been put down, despite the significant amount of political controversy and opposition that this generated throughout the later nineteenth century. At the same time, however, the “realist” assumption that the peasantry would not tolerate higher agricultural tax quotas remained firmly entrenched, unaffected - and even strengthened - by Taiping-era socioeconomic crises. Provincial land surveying made an institutional comeback in the late nineteenth century, but not until the Qing Court faced a complete fiscal collapse in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) did it finally throw caution to the wind and begin to systemically experiment with higher agricultural tax quotas. To the surprise of many contemporaries, these experiments were largely successful, and while they came much too late to save the Qing from political collapse, they nonetheless laid the intellectual and political foundations for a more robust tax regime in the Republican era and the People’s Republic.

Meant for public health professionals, the Chapter explains what is meant by political economy and its relevance to health, why structural reforms in health are frequently influenced and obstructed by political considerations, how political expediency influences priority setting decisions in health that are frequently related to allocation of resources, and what measures can be taken to minimize political obstacles and barriers in favour of evidence-informed decisions. Political economy of health, as a field of study, grew rapidly in the 1970s that sought to explain the disparities in health care access and the socioeconomic differential in health status across society. Health system development, reform and transformation is a social and political intervention. Political economy analysis (PEA) is central to the successful formulation of health policies and plans and for ensuring their effective implementation. PEA can help to identify potential barriers and facilitators for policy and system change. PEA can help to identify potential barriers and facilitators for policy and system change.

There is nowadays no shortage of books on the Arctic – and this is the last chapter of yet another one. What is different at the end of the read? To answer that question, let me start with a reflection on the understanding we had when we embarked upon writing this book. Despite the rich diversity of publications on the topic, it is possible to discern a few major lines of analysis in the growing body of literature on contemporary Arctic change. One such approach consists of attempts to map and take stock of state-of-the-art knowledge on multiple dimensions of environment, climate, and social conditions in the region. In this category we find the rising genre of “assessments,” many issued by the Arctic Council, of for example: biodiversity, pollution, human health, snow and ice, climate adaptation, impacts of climate change, and a range of other topics. The Arctic Human Development Reports (Einarsson et al., 2004; Fondahl & Larsen, 2014) also belong here, typically broad, multi-authored, anchored in new research, and accessible for wider policy and professional audiences. An attempt to synthesize this broad strand of knowledge was the Arctic Resilience Report (Carson & Peterson, 2016). It compiled an impressive amount of data from many knowledge areas and established better understanding of complex relationships but had less to say about how to interpret this new knowledge and how to use it to address the challenges.

Resource extraction has grown to global significance as part of a particular version of industrial modernity. This modernity emerged with the industrial revolution, accelerated dramatically during the twentieth century, and is now changing rapidly. The fossil fuel-driven world as we know it is questioned and in many parts of the world already taking a downturn. Resource extraction modernity came with a particular kind of societies, based on values linked to gender-, ethnic- and social hierarchy and with largely unsustainable practices. As this modernity is challenged, political and cultural tensions have grown around extractive industries that go far beyond those we saw in the past captured in concepts such as preservation and conservation. To make sense of these comprehensive changes the chapter unites two key concepts: the Anthropocene and the Planetary Mine that together shape the new extractivist paradigm. The Anthropocene speaks to the profound geo-anthropological transformation of the human-earth relationship. The Planetary Mine brings out the interconnected global character of contemporary resource extractivism of which Arctic mining is a significant part.

This first concluding chapter discusses the ways that social science literature has analyzed the legacies of colonial rule, and argues that colonial state-building may represent a more fruitful approach to analyzing complex regimes and their long-term consequences. It presents a discussion of the logic of historical legacies in relation to the comparative-historical framework of critical junctures and path dependency. It then discusses the drawbacks to dominant approaches that focus on causal inference in assessing colonial legacies.

Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians have learnt to cope with climate variability in meeting water needs over a range of time-scales. The five cities are locations that Aboriginal people cared for and maintained relationships with water over tens of thousands of years, knowledge of which is maintained today. In the face of a changing climate and continuing population growth, the five cities face challenges in developing and maintaining sustainable and equitable approaches to water provision and management. Each response to water management problems is shaped by path-dependent effects of earlier decisions and the ‘wicked’ nature of problems that defy simple solutions. The five cities are marked by climatic diversity, and all are at least partly built on floodplains. Each has a distinct relationship with the natural water of its hinterland and the proximity of ocean outlets for sewage disposal.

White settlers domesticated water by shaping and regulating natural water features into systems of dams, piped networks, and waste disposal facilities. Clean water is a common resource when there is no restriction on its use, and each use of the resource makes less available to others. Overuse of common water resources was an early feature of the five cities, and effective solutions were the product of democratic institutions that empowered citizens to take collective action and express demands for improved infrastructure. In Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, sanitary reform through investment in networked water infrastructure in response to the threat of cholera was underway by the mid-nineteenth century; the development of effective sewerage was delayed by the costs of extension across large metropolitan areas and the fragmentation of political authority between local councils. The smaller cities, Brisbane and Perth, were slower to invest, and water supplies continued to be unreliable and subject to pollution from cesspits. By the start of the twentieth century, variations in water infrastructure systems reflected the path-dependent nature of earlier solutions, which would constrain the options available to future decision makers.

Building on the growing body of literature on barriers to adaptation to climate change, this chapter focuses on ‘lock-ins’ as a particular conceptual approach to understanding path dependencies and rigidities in policy processes with a particular relevance to the field. The central research questions are, first, how can lock-ins be conceptualised, what indicators might identify them, and how can they be detected and described? Second, we seek to understand the emergence of lock-ins in climate adaptation policies by reference to central mechanisms originating from: (1) knowledge, discourses, and expertise; (2) physical infrastructures; (3) institutions and past policy tools; and (4) actors and their respective mental frames. Third, in cases where they are considered harmful, how can lock-ins be overcome or abated? It is the central thrust of this chapter to advance an in-depth and conceptually rich explanatory approach to climate adaptation governance and its obstacles. Empirical material, including evidence from pre-existing studies, will support the argumentation essentially by way of illustration.