Because the rules of the competitive game are tremendously flexible, there are few limits to the amount of change that can be achieved through SBM. Therefore, it may seem that, in SBM, ``all options are on the table at any time. This is not quite the case.In practice, there are limits to what can be achieved by SBM at any given moment. Ideas that are too far from the status quo cannot even be entertained, so the practical options are limited to a window around the status quo. This is called the Overton window. Moreover, legislative (as opposed to regulatory) change does not happen gradually over time. Instead, change is punctuated: the status quo lasts for a long time and then, suddenly, all the change happens at once. Therefore, when SBM involves a legislative change, there are narrow windows of opportunity.

Chapter 10 discusses different types of scientific studies that need to be done to fully get a grip on the science of the fair process effect and its potentially alleviating effects on various developing instances of societal discontent. This includes field experiments and studies examining the important role of trust and issues such as perceived legitimacy, self-esteem, and personal and informational uncertainty. We also need to understand the possible downsides of the fair process effect better, for example, that sometimes people use unfair procedures to stop learning from their mistakes. The chapter further notes important normative implications about the fair process effect and that we should be aware that the effect can be used to justify the current status quo and legitimize power structures in our societies. The chapter concludes by giving directions for the development of practical interventions that may be used on the basis of this book to counter intensified distrust, heightened polarization, and strong beliefs in unfounded conspiracy theories. Ultimately, using insights on the fair process effect conveyed in this book may lead us to become better and more sociable beings, which in the end may increase the chances of us living in a better world.

The Sultanate was a global state that interacted with regimes in North, West and East Africa, Mediterranean Europe, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia. Its ideology of diplomacy focused on maintenance of the balance of power extant during the formative stage of its founding: control over the Syrian Littoral and Red Sea nautical routes to South and East Asia. Senior officers appointed from Cairo ruled Syrian provincial capitals as viceroys, tying them directly to the imperial center. On the Red Sea coast of Arabia (Hijaz), the Hasanid Sharifs of Mecca exercised local political authority, but from Baybars’ reign were compelled to comply with the Sultanate’s commercial and fiduciary policies over the spice trade. Tensions in Southeastern Asia Minor heightened when objectives of territorial stasis advocated by the Mamluks clashed with aims of territorial conquest asserted by the Ottomans. Regional principalities pursued their own goals of autonomy with varying degrees of success. The international system of commerce, centered on Venetian and Mamluk exploitation of trade routes to Asia through the Red Sea, was decisively altered by the Portuguese entry to the Indian Ocean. When the Ottomans defeated the Cairo Sultanate, its centrality in the global environment was already diminished.

Chapter 3 examines the general rules of international law that apply in disputed maritime areas. First, it focuses on the possibility of whether a conflict arising in disputed maritime areas can come to threaten international peace and security. Coastal States have approached the UN Security Council on a number of occasions, seeking declarations from it to the effect that as a result of unilateral conduct in disputed areas, a situation had arisen which met the threshold of that international peace and security was put in jeopardy. Further, other relevant general rules under international law, some of which by their nature are related to the treaty obligation of Articles 74(3) and 83(3) LOSC not to hamper or jeopardise (e.g. not aggravating or extending a dispute and the prohibition on abuse of rights), and their status (e.g. are they customary international law rules?) as well as their applicability to disputed maritime areas are explored. The chapter also discusses the possibility of engaging international responsibility, if certain unilateral activities that have been undertaken in disputed areas resulted in a breach of international law.

It begins with preliminary matters: an opening section dealing with policy context and related guiding principles, then an outline of the governing legal framework, international and domestic legislation, courts and regulatory bodies, with some references to international reports. This leads into the first of two contemporary case law sections, which examines the state–religion relationship in relation to the most relevant fundamental human rights: the freedoms of religion, assembly/association and expression. The second and largest considers the church–state relationship as it intersects with equality rights in relation to: marriage, family life, divorce and death; healthcare; education; employment; service provision; and security.

The institutional complementarities of that marked Brazil’s political economy between 1985 and 2018 period were placed under considerable strain by the recession, fiscal crisis, corruption investigations, and political upheaval that culminated in the 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro. An open question was whether the multiple and overlapping crises of the 2010s would destabilize the institutional equilibrium that had prevailed over the previous generation. To evaluate this question, this chapter summarizes the contributions of this manuscript to our understanding of Brazil’s political economy under democracy. It then describes how past reform efforts failed to move the political economy away from the status quo equilibrium, and the ways in which institutional complementarities shaped the pace and scope of change. It concludes with an evaluation of the “stress test” posed by the Bolsonaro administration, pointing to the importance of changes in the political realm for resolving Brazil’s long-term economic developmental challenge.

Wicksell’s 1896 essay on just taxation approved of Mill’s endorsement of Hare’s system of proportional representation. The distinction between democracy, identified as government by discussion, and majority rule is central. When Buchanan laid out the role of the economist, he worried about a temptation to propose policies that garnered only majority support rather than policies with unanimous appeal. Buchanan’s development of Wicksell’s principle that expenditures and the taxes to finance them ought to be voted on simultaneously shows in his opposition to deficit financing: those who benefit from deficit-financed expenditures need not be the same as those who bear the costs. The link to an older Chicago tradition of Simons, who was concerned with the monetary instability generated by a fractional reserve monetary system, shows in the 1962 In Search of a Monetary Constitution. Tullock’s initial paper on rent seeking targeted the Chicago result that the economy was close to allocative efficiency. The question of the status quo comes into focus when we ask whether Wicksell’s simultaneity principle is appropriate under dictatorial rule where government by discussion does not exist.