Sovereignty as Value is one of the first books to examine sovereignty using solely a normative approach. Through fourteen original essays, the book seeks to understand its viability in a globalized world, thus taking into account the inclusion of a language of rights, limitation and legitimacy. The authors’ focus is on whether sovereignty as a normative concept might be understood as a criterion of legitimate power and authority; as a foundational concept of public ethics applied to political and legal institutions. How should notions of legitimacy be linked with the notion of sovereignty? In what manner is sovereignty challenged by territoriality and territorial control? How does sovereignty relate to political legitimacy? Are all the forms of sovereign authority legitimate? Does the project of advancing human rights globally conflict with the logic of exclusion inherent in the classic notion of national sovereignty? These are some of the questions that will be assessed in this collective volume.

The topic of sovereignty is contentious, and one of enduring interest. In a world of ever increasing economic globalisation, the rise of supranational regulation and the interconnected age of information and communication technology, among many other developments, have challenged the once exclusively held Westphalian model of sovereignty. The distinction between the internal aspect of sovereignty as expressed in terms of ultimate authority in a constitution, and the external aspect involving the relationship between sovereign states has been blurred. This has given rise to contemporary debates that explore the theoretical and practical implications of current challenges to established doctrines. Evidently no book could encompass the entirety of the contemporary debates on sovereignty. This is a book of essays focusing on sovereignty by a team of leading writers contributing domestic, European and international perspectives. The essays have been written at a time of very great testing of the institutional frameworks at every level: domestic, European, international or global. The book illuminates the enduring strength of sovereignty as a foundational concept and the continuing widespread appeal of sovereignty as an idea.

This book presents an original theory of the just price, and it is a welcome addition to scholarship on a radically underdeveloped field. This work reassesses the age-old idea that there is a just price of things, one that goes beyond the Scholastic tradition of the just price and its exclusive concern with commutative justice. There is more to just price theory than the concern for keeping equality of value between goods exchanged. Modern concerns over efficiency, autonomy, and distributive justice, can also find a place within a theory of the just price. The book: - Presents a new approach to just price theory through a broad analysis of different values and the incorporation of those conceptions into a wider normative framework - Argues that these different values ground varied conceptions of the just price, and - Promotes a virtue-based approach to price justification as an adequate framework for meeting the challenges that stem from each conception Perfect for scholars and students in the fields of jurisprudence, philosophy of private law, contract law, and political theory, this book makes a significant contribution to legal theory and the emerging field of the philosophy of economics.

The referendum is not a monolithic method of national decision making. There are a multitude of referendum forms which exist under varying constitutional conditions and operate in different ways. A global comparison shows that more than half the constitutions of the world provide for the referendum at a national level, but referendums are also carried out without explicit constitutional support. Two main forms of referendum can be observed, the mandatory constitutional referendum and the policy vote. This book argues that the referendum does not undermine representative decision making, but supplements it in various ways: the referendum is not diametrically opposed to representative government, and when properly designed and used, the institution of the referendum can enhance the legitimacy of a constitutional and political system. This book is the first comprehensive constitutional and comparative analysis of the referendum. It offers illuminating and intriguing reading for all those interested in national decision making.

This book asks if it is time to “reboot” the fundamental institutions of global international society. The volume revisits Hedley Bull’s seminal contribution The Anarchical Society by exploring the interconnected nature of change, contestation and resilience for maintaining order in today’s uncertain and complex environment. The volume adds to Bull’s theorizing by recognizing that order demands change, that contestation should be welcomed, and that resilience is anchored in local and agent-led forms of ordering. The contributors to Part One of the book focus on theoretical and conceptual issues related to order in the global international society, whilst the contributors to Part Two of the book focus on the primary institutions as listed by Hedley Bull with the addition of a chapter on the market adding a distinctive commentary on new and important dynamics of change, contestation and resilience of the existing institutions.

In this issue, a team of economists look at approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or permanent phenomenon. Era Dabla-Norris and Gabriela Inchauste examine what drives the growth of firms, with a focus on informality and regulations. Evan Tanner and Issouf Samake use a vector autoregression approach to examine the probabilistic sustainability of public debt in Brazil. Mexico, and Turkey. And Rachel Glennerster and Yongseok Shin ask whether transparency pays?that is, does the frequency and accuracy of macroeconomic information released to the public lead to lower borrowing costs in sovereign debt markets?

The world appears to be globalising economically, technologically and even, to a halting extent, politically. This process of globalisation raises the possibility of an international legal framework, a possibility which has gained pressing relevance in the wake of the recent global economic crisis. But for any international legal framework to exist, normative agreement between countries, with very different political, economic, cultural and legal traditions, becomes necessary. This work explores the possibility of such a normative agreement through the prism of national constitutional norms. Since 1945, more than a hundred countries have adopted constitutional texts which incorporate, at least in part, a Bill of Rights. These texts reveal significant similarities; the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for instance, had a marked influence on the drafting of the Bill of Rights for South Africa, New Zealand and Hong Kong as well as the Basic Law of Israel. Similarly, the drafts of Eastern European constitutions reflect significant borrowing from older texts. The essays in this book examine the depth of these similarities; in particular the extent to which textual borrowings point to the development of foundational values in these different national legal systems and the extent of the similarities or differences between these values and the priorities accorded to them. From these national studies the work analyses the rise of constitutionalism since the Second World War, and charts the possibility of a consensus on values which might plausibly underpin an effective and legitimate international legal order.

The essays in this book range broadly over different aspects of value theory and include contributions by Nicholas Rescher, Frances Kamm, Barry Smith, and Jan Narveson. Portions examine the theoretical foundations of values and valuation exploring the rational groundwork for judgments. Other aspects, appealing to value distinctions of inherent, intrinsic, and instrumental, drawn most notably by C. I. Lewis, bring to light matters of aesthetic, social political, ethical, and ontological issues. Throughout Inherent and Instrumental Values, the authors address questions assessing the intrinsic worth of utility of actions and whether manual or professional labor can hold an equal value rating and the implications of this assessment. In other portions of the anthology, authors explore the extent to which such value categories above, help clarify and assess moral issues we encounter in everyday life. Among some analyzed in this book are racism and affirmative action, abortion, euthanasia, homelessness, care, and friendship. The theme of the nature of value and the role of valuation we encounter in the days of our life, provide a basis for examining other aspects of axiology that lie beyond the scope of this work.

Before military action, and even before mobilization, the decision on whether to go to war is debated by politicians, pundits, and the public. As they address the right or wrong of such action, it is also a time when, in the language of the just war tradition, the wise would deeply investigate their true claim to jus ad bellum (“the right of war”). Wars have negative consequences, not the least impinging on human life, and offer infrequent and uncertain benefits, yet war is part of the human condition. James G. Murphy’s insightful analysis of the jus ad bellum criteria—competent authority, just cause, right intention, probability of success, last resort, and proportionality—is grounded in a variety of contemporary examples from World War I through Vietnam, the "soccer war" between Honduras and El Salvador, Afghanistan, and the Middle East conflict. Murphy argues persuasively that understanding jus ad bellum requires a primary focus on the international common good and the good of peace. Only secondarily should the argument about going to war hinge on the right of self-defense; in fact, pursuing the common good requires political action, given that peace is not simply the absence of violence. He moves on to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the jus ad bellum criteria, contending that some criteria depend logically on others—and that competent authority, not just cause, is ultimately the most significant criterion in an analysis of going to war. This timely study will be of special interest to scholars and students in ethics, war and peace, and international affairs.