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This chapter presents an overview of the ecology of ideas in American politics. It discusses the various means by which political participants engage with a multiple constituency of core values in the competitive struggle for advantage and legitimacy. It also reviews how analysts have sought to come to terms with the dual existence of a fixed set of central principles within society, and the fluid and innovative style by which these core values are articulated and aggregated for political effect.

This chapter reflects on the concept of national security in early American foreign policy. It also illuminates the relationships between the concept of national security and the burgeoning numbers of books and articles dealing with grand strategy. Here, national security had come to mean the defense of core values from external threats. As understood by U.S. officials, national security was a dynamic, changing concept, responding to the evolution of threats abroad and the definition of core values at home. Core values themselves were elusive, forcing historians and scholars of international relations to discover and analyze precisely what interests, ideals, or values policymakers most wanted to defend. Similarly, external threats existed in the eyes of beholders; different observers perceived danger in dramatically different ways. What were real threats and what were perceived threats might only be resolved in the aftermath of events, and perhaps not even then. Nonetheless, to understand the making of national security policy, the historian had to empathize with the policymakers and had to understand their perception of threat (however accurate or skewed).

This chapter examines how basic values turn into political choices through core political values, namely through beliefs related to issues and priorities that stay at the core of the political discourse, such as state intervention in the economy, military defense, civil rights, traditional morality, acceptance of immigrants, and law and order. Empirical studies performed in several countries attest to the importance of basic values as coherent overarching principles that guide and organize core political values. These studies also reveal that political values account for a substantial portion of variance in voting and for ideological self-placement, largely mediating the contribution of basic values. Finally, they reveal that political values show consistent patterns of relations with each other and with political ideology that are largely invariant across Western democratic countries.

This chapter provides a cross-cutting summary of previous chapters and a more explicit vision for health statistics in the 21st century. It argues that in order to develop enhanced national health statistics enterprises, four conditions must be met: first, a clear and explicit mission for the health statistics enterprise; second, use of an overarching conceptual framework; third, consensus on core values; and fourth, agreement on a set of basic principles for further development and reform of the enterprise. Strategies for meeting these four conditions are discussed.

Geographic constituencies refer to a natural institutional arrangement in an agrarian society where economic self-sufficiency is the norm. Yet, geographic constituencies have self-preservation powers which prevent further changes once they are constituted. The divisiveness and occasional paralysis in policy making found in contemporary industrial democracies are to some extent the outcomes of geographically constituted elections. The debate over political freedom in Hong Kong is largely reduced to whether and how the chief executive and the legislature should be elected through universal suffrage. This, to the author, is a limited and distorted perspective of how political freedoms should be constituted in Hong Kong. The author also suggests an approach which grants every qualified resident in Hong Kong two votes, with one vote being cast through geographic constituencies and the other through functional constituencies.

Ever since the days of Plato, scholars have been trying to understand value. Today the investigation of value is central to many disciplines studying human thinking, feeling, and behavior, such as economics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, or sociology. While these disciplines are interested in value, they use different definitions and focus on different aspects of the phenomenon. The aim of this volume is to bring together the different perspectives and to contribute to an interdisciplinary dialogue by providing a common reference point that may serve as a resource for integration and cross-fertilization. This final chapter looks back at the contributions assembled in this volume and highlights some of the important themes that have emerged.

This chapter argues that the digital humanities community must develop a flexible statement of values that it can use to communicate its identity to itself and the general public, guide its priorities, and perhaps heal its divisions. Rather than debating who is in and who is out, the digital humanities community needs to develop a keener sense of what it stands for and what is at stake in its work. Taking an initial step toward this goal, the chapter discusses the rationale for creating a core values statement by drawing on the literature about professional codes; suggests a process for engaging the community in developing a values statement; explores models for and influences on digital humanities values; and analyzes the digital humanities literature to put forward potential values.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on strategic giving. It considers core value proposition as a critical element of strategic giving and clarifies the concepts of the key elements of the philanthropic prism. This chapter argues that though philanthropy may not always be directed toward popular causes or groups that embrace broadly held beliefs, it is the very act of trying to act on behalf of the public interest that has the most significance. It also contends that philanthropy has a vital role to play as an independent actor in society, acting not simply based on what government defines as public needs, but in its own autonomous way.

The decade of the 1880s marks the end of the Plains communal bison hunting. Taking Carole Crumley's “core values” in historical ecology as an organizing concept, this chapter examines the ecological, economic, social, political, and ritual conditions under which a Plains Indian society coped with sudden and devastating territorial circumscription, repression, and environmental change by modifying their relationship with the landscape within acceptable cultural parameters. Among the Montana Blackfeet, resilience was achieved largely through the development of a post-bison hunting complex that preserved ancient core values while allowing rapid shifts to intensive high-elevation hunting of ungulates, change in the size and composition of hunting groups and hunters’ social networks, and adjustment of traditional religious views and practices to new hunting conditions.

This chapter discusses Berkshire Hathaway’s corporate culture. Corporate culture is defined by a set of shared beliefs, practices, and outlooks that determine a corporation’s expectations and influence the behavior of its personnel toward colleagues, customers, and owners alike. The tone is set at the top and percolates throughout the organization through daily decisions, challenges, and crises. The values of a company are at the core of its culture, as they establish the standards to achieve its goals. At Berkshire, these values first began to take shape from the acquisition criteria Buffett established to identify potential subsidiaries: proven profitability, good unleveraged returns on equity, management in place, basic businesses, and a fair price. Another formal expression of Berkshire’s tone that helped shape its values is a set of owner-related business principles that define how Berkshire and its subsidiaries relate to its shareholders and other constituents. It is an impressive list of fifteen principles that Berkshire’s chief executive lives by. Examples include conceiving of the organization as a partnership despite using the corporate form, minimizing the use of borrowed money, assessing whether to reinvest earnings or pay dividends based on whether a dollar reinvested will increase shareholder value by at least as much, and holding subsidiaries forever.

This chapter starts the process of developing a framework of public law norms for internal contracts by setting out a policy to guide that development. It proposes that governments can be viewed as mechanisms of accountability, particularly from provider to purchaser. Thus, a task for regulation is to set norms which would help make that accountability process fair and effective. It argues that for effective policy implementation three criteria are needed: accountability is a fundamental value in a democracy, and therefore politically acceptable; internal contracts can be interpreted as mechanisms of accountability; and the idea of a fair and effective mechanism of accountability is a fruitful source of norms. The chapter concludes that the promotion of accountability as a guiding policy is appealing because it is a core value in the public sector.

Political leadership is often presented as a top-down and agency-driven process but as this chapter shows, leadership is a relational dynamic that has to include followers to be a viable enterprise. Leader–follower engagement is revealed as a complex and variable interdependency that raises significant methodological, conceptual, and theoretical issues. The chapter examines and appraises different types of ‘followership’ ranging from interpersonal forms of bargaining and negotiated compliance through to the more multilayered relationships involving the cultivation of cooperation via core values, emotional ties, and common identities. It also considers the influence of psychological conditioning (e.g. charisma) and the dynamics of social psychology (e.g. ‘groupthink’) before going on to consider the more extreme forms of internalized submissiveness associated with the ‘authoritarian character’.

This chapter focuses on the master exegete Rashi of Troyes. Although many have written supercommentaries, essays, and even books about Rashi as a biblical or talmudic exegete, until recently few have looked at him as an original medieval Jewish thinker, let alone as a historical source reflective of northern European Jewish mentalité. And yet, no medieval Jew shaped the collective identity of Ashkenazi and even Sephardi Jewry more than this remarkable figure, whose genealogy is obscure but who is often compared and contrasted to his Sephardi analogue, Maimonides, whose genealogy was long and distinguished. Could Rashi have been so widely accepted as 'the' interpreter of biblical-talmudic Judaism for all times had he himself not been a person of his own time as well as a refashioner of it? Rashi proposed Jewish core values to his readers, especially in his Pentateuch (Humash) commentary. He did not write a treatise but wrote biblical commentaries in the form of a selective editing of rabbinic lore. Even when he did not interpret narrative biblical irregularities, he wrote what can be called ‘rewritten Midrash’.

The conclusion summarizes the basic thesis of the book. It argues that there is a necessity to revisit and recast the epistemological foundations of Shi‘i legal theory. This study has illustrated that some of the doctrines that are supposedly “Islamic” emerged in the past as a result of human interpretive endeavors and need not be binding for all times. It also suggests that contemporary jurists need to retrieve core values from the Qur’an and the sacred sources so that their juridical edicts accord with the objectives and moral injunctions of the Qur’an. Muslim reformers need to also engage their communities and to explain to them that, for a text to be relevant, there is a need for a revision or reinterpretation of the traditional exegesis. Furthermore, reforms are possible only if Muslims are free to express themselves and discuss matters candidly without fear of intimidation or reprisals.

“Connecting with Families: First Steps” focuses on both the “why” and the “how” of connecting with families. Connecting is the first step of the 3 C’s approach. It is critical that schools build trusting relationships with families, and there is an important role for school social workers in this effort. The chapter provides examples of best practices for building these relationships through connections. It is essential to address differences because family engagement initiatives are complex. Families are different; communities are different; schools are different. No one approach will work for every partnership. There will be challenges, but challenges can be overcome if you build trusting relationships, use the strengths perspective, and keep focused on the core values of family engagement. The chapter concludes with a case vignette and examples.