This chapter explains the logic behind the choice of institutions that the book highlights. A liberal order is impossible without the capacity to form organizations able to act on behalf of private constituencies. Apart from providing shared goods, private organizations restrain entities capable of repression, including the state. Hence, a section of the book is devoted to exploring the political effects of Islamic and modern waqfs. Whereas the former played key roles in keeping civil society anemic, the latter is now invigorating civic life. Religious repression has been ubiquitous in the Middle East. In inducing preference and knowledge falsification in broad domains, it conceals doubts about policies promoted in the name of religion. In the process, it impoverishes and distorts public discourse. For these reasons alone, religious freedoms are also essential to liberal governance. Economic freedoms are pivotal because they shape political incentives and capacities. Private property rights, the freedom to invest, and predictable taxation are among the determinants of private political capacities. So are characteristics of the available forms of economic organization. Institutions that limit the scale, longevity, and complexity of Middle Eastern enterprises have reduced the political reach of private economic actors.

Access to affordable water and sanitation services is crucial for the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation. Where these services are available but not affordable, people will not be able to use sufficient amounts of water and adequately maintain latrines, or will turn to cheaper, unsafe sources or practices. Another consequence is that people, in order to support the costs of water and sanitation, might compromise the realization of other human rights such as food, housing, health or education. However, the issue of affordability does not always receive the attention it deserves. As people will go to great lengths to pay for water to ensure their survival and health, there is often an assumption that people will obtain the water they need even without the state support.

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, there is a moral difference between doing something and allowing it to occur. Its defenders and critics both assume the existence of an ontological difference that the purported moral difference is said to supervene upon. This difference – between so-called positive acts of doing and negative acts of not-doing – was famously introduced by Gilbert Ryle, who argued that the latter (which include neglect) were not really actions at all. He is opposed by Davidsonians who, by contrast, maintain that negative act tokens are just positive acts under negative characterisations. In this chapter, I argue that both the moral and the metaphysical debates rest on the mistaken belief that actions and/or their characterisations can be neatly divided into those that are positive and those that are negative. I use a wide range of examples to demonstrate how all action contains inaction, and vice versa. Moreover, ontological perceptions of what is positive and what is negative cannot be neatly separated from evaluative ones. None of this entails that there can never be any moral difference between doing x and allowing x to happen. But it is not one that can be captured by any principle, not least because any given instance of doing x will involve the not-doing of some other thing (a, b, or c …), and any case of of allowing x to happen will be inseparable from doing some such other thing, where the doing of a involved in allowing x may be morally worse than the allowing of a which occurs in doing x. I conclude that the Bhagavad Gita is right in proclaiming that the ability to reliably perceive one’s action in inaction, and vice versa, eludes us.

Chapter 10 summarizes the book’s principles and discusses future research directions.

Chapter 1 presents the objectives of the book, which blends a traditional monograph with topics of contemporary interest and an analysis of attitude and behavior change in real and virtual contexts. Definitions and a overview of the theory are presented.

Chapter 9 discusses how messages designed with the intent of influencing behavior and behavioral interventions are successful when they influence factors in the person and the situation that ultimately make those programs actionable. Actionability is the probability that the message or intervention communicates or enables performance of behavioral recommendations . First, a message or behavioral intervention can stimulate the cognitive, motivational, or behavioral processes that ultimately make the individual perform the recommended behavior. Second, it can promote behavioral recommendations that fit within the world in which potential actors live. These factors and relevant data are discussed.

Chapter 4 covers behavior, intentions, and goals. It describes my view of intentionality, including subtle intention formation and the psychological representation of intention. Goals vary in terms of content, level of conscious involvement, and type of object. Goals are either general (to get tenure) or specific (publish a paper), focus on actions or inactions (effortful behavior vs. rest), and have either psychological endstates (i.e., behavioral, affective, and cognitive) or objective endstates (e.g., a financial or health outcome). Relevant data are discussed.

How will this crackdown affect China’s economic and political prospects? Chapter 6, “All the King’s Men,” examines the determinants of downfall among city-level leaders during Xi’s campaign. My analysis finds a remarkably high turnover rate, indicating extraordinarily stressful conditions and heightened political risks for local leaders. In addition, I find that patronage, not performance, predicts the likelihood of downfall. Facing harsh scrutiny, volatility, and mounting demands, bureaucrats feel paralyzed, precipitating a new problem in Chinese politics – inaction.