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This chapter develops various propositions on the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council by applying the analytical framework of exit, voice, and loyalty. It argues that informal mechanisms may enhance SC governance if they are able to strike a balance between inclusiveness, efficiency, informality, transparency, and accountability.

This chapter introduces and defines the terms ‘informal groups of states’, ‘groups of friends’, and ‘contact groups’. It develops a synergistic analytical framework, identifying the causal mechanisms that contribute to the formation of informal groups of states by borrowing from insights of theories of agency and delegation. It challenges the proposition that centralization and independence are key functional characteristics of international organizations which enhance efficiency. Instead, it argues that decentralization via informal groups of states allows the achievement of policy goals that would be unattainable in a centralized setting. The typology of exit, voice, and loyalty is incorporated into analytical framework to explain the dynamics between informal groups and the Security Council. Such an approach provides substantial explanatory leverage to explain the institutional effects of the Security Council under conditions of systemic change. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book’s contents.

The UN Secretariat assumed the leading role as intermediary to reach a negotiated settlement of the conflict in El Salvador. The Friends of the Secretary-General on El Salvador somewhat revived the concept of the advisory committees that had been established in the 1950s. The transformation of the bipolar system created the permissive political context for a leading role of the United Nations, with the United States and the Soviet Union as guardians of the process in the background. Given the relative success of the Friends, the concept turned into a model which was subsequently applied — with mixed results — to crises in Haiti, Guatemala, Western Sahara, and Georgia.

This chapter looks at the frequency of coordinate clauses, because-clauses, passive voice, and dislocated syntax (e.g., clefting and left dislocation). There are some age and gender differences but few social class differences. The two social class differences that are statistically significant are passive voice, which the middle-class speakers use more frequently than the working-class speakers, and dislocated syntax, which the working-class speakers use much more frequently than the middle-class speakers. In contrast to the views of Basil Bernstein, there is no reason to believe that there are many social class differences in the use of syntax.

This concluding chapter shows how this project brings together theory and practice, and draws out some ways in which the book contributes to the understanding of equality. These include redefining advantage and disadvantage; tracking the least advantages; relevance to real life; including the voices of disadvantaged people; and justification for focusing on the least advantaged.

This chapter spells out the fundamental goal of the book: to make sense out of the radical change in perspective from a buoyant confidence at the start of book 1 of the Treatise to a serious case of skeptical jitters at the close of book 1. The leading idea is that the perspective Hume adopts is a function of the level of inquiry he is engaged in at various stages of his investigations. Not one, but four perspectives (or voices) are found in the Treatise: the confident projector of a science of human nature, an abject skeptic, the voice of the vulgar, and finally a mitigated skeptic. The last standpoint is the product of the interaction of the vulgar standpoint with radical or Pyrrhonian doubt.

The chapter surveys the “state-building” literature and discusses, in particular, the works of Stein Rokkan and of Albert Hirschman, highlighting their usefulness for studying welfare state developments. An original analytical framework is proposed for the exploration of spatial politics, based on a combination of “vocality” and “locality” options. The chapter then discusses the emergence and evolution of modern citizenship as a form of spatial closure, and proposes an interpretation of social rights as products of structuring processes.

This first chapter sketches the elements of a theory of voice structuring under different conditions of territorial confinement of actors and resources. Using Hirschman and Rokkan’s work, the chapter formulates theoretical propositions about how processes of internal conflict generation and opposition development (political structuring) relate to the processes of boundary demarcation in a large-scale territorial polity, and how the two relate to the internal institutional hierarchy of the same territory. A correspondence is established between micro-individual choices of exit and the corresponding systemic processes of boundary building and control; the micro-individual loyalty and the systemic structures and processes of system maintenance; and the micro-individual propensity to voice and the systemic structuring of channels and organizations for representation. It is argued that the framework is general enough to be applied to different territorial political formations, to characterize pre-nation-state polities, as well as to understand post-nation-state polities.

This chapter looks closely at the various techniques by which the Jesus movies stake their claim to historicity. These techniques include introductory scrolled texts, voice-over narration, and, more subtly, details of setting, costuming, music, and the physical appearance of the characters. The chapter then outlines the ways in which the Jesus biopics undermine their own stated claims to historicity and studies in detail two movies that self-consciously negate the claim to historicity, The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus of Montreal.

To overcome its reputation as a remote bureaucracy, the Commission has used the Internet to promote public and media understanding, citizen participation and support for the EU, as well as for networking with national administrations, businesses, and civil society organizations. It has made both a top-down use of the Internet to increase openness, blaming the ‘democratic deficit’ on an information deficit, as well as advocating a bottom-up improvement of consultation processes to ensure better governance and interaction with decision-makers, e.g., through Your Voice in Europe. However, the Commission officials make little use of the feedback mechanisms. The use of an Intranet has helped increase Commission efficiency and interaction with other EU institutions. Citizen participation has taken second place to improving internal elite coordination.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It begins with a review of discussions in the preceding chapters. It shows that by comparing systematically obtained phonetic predictions with attested parallel changes, the book offers a reliable and constrained method for evaluating the phonetic plausibility of reconstructed sound changes, which could be applied to other reconstructed sound changes.

This concluding chapter discusses the personal experience of the author in dealing with palliative care and the concept of the user's voice, which is widely welcomed in seeking to refine the way forward. It reveals that the common thread that unites the chapters in this book is a deep humanity, which is focused on improving the lot of the terminally ill. The chapter also shows that palliative care needs to operate within complex structures: organizational and even political. Alliances between diverse groups of people must be formed and financial limitations faced.

This chapter demonstrates how the United States deviates from the ideal of equal voice. It is based on the premise that equal consideration of the interests and preferences of all citizens is an important component of democratic governance. Equal consideration depends on equal political voice. Those who express political voice—by voting or otherwise taking part in politics—are able to inform the government of their needs and preferences and to pressure public officials to pay attention; they are therefore in a better position to protect their interests. Thus the chapter considers if equal political voice—or, more realistically, more nearly equal voice than is currently the case—is a desirable goal.

In Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams uses the idea of a “necessary identity” ascribed to women to explain why ancient Greek society viewed the condition of slavery as coercive, but viewed the condition of women as inevitable. Williams fails to notice that female sex did not for the Greeks in itself constitute a social identity; rather, it is the fact of coercion into a social role that is denied in the case of women but not slaves. The key fact, then as now, is that justifying some people's subjection by others requires making coercion hard to recognize and easy to deny. Social arrangements that make identities appear necessary include naturalizing, privatizing, and normalizing the ascription of identities, and disqualifying the voice and testimony of those who bear them. Identities are made to appear necessary by a combination of force and epistemic rigging through physical, social, and legal arrangements.