‘The devil or the Dutch’: Holland's impact on the financial revolution in England, 1643–1694

SUMMARY

In this article Beat Kümin and Andreas Würgler make a comparative study of how the peoples in early modern England and Hesse used their acknowledged rights to present petitions and grievances to exercise a real influence on the process of legislation, and even over administration in general. They could on occasion, virtually initiate legislation from below. The article illustrates the unusually wide scope and usage of the petition in England, helped by the early recognition of the subjects' right to petition both houses of Parliament as well as the monarch. It is suggested that this could result in a broad popular participation in the work of government. But even in Hesse, where the rulers asserted their sovereign rights as sole legislators and where, from the seventeenth century, they were attempting to develop an effective bureaucratic administration to sustain their aspirations, the method of petitioning the ruler, either through the Estates, Gravamina or directly, enabled ordinary people to have a part in promoting legislation and to participate in, and even effectively restrain, the princely administration.     

Japan's Search for the ‘Sweet Spot’: International Cooperation and Regional Security in Northeast Asia

To analyze how Japan's competing objectives and specific policies have been evolving and how they trade off in today's regional security situation, this article argues that shifting Japanese foreign and security policies in Northeast Asia can be understood as ongoing responses to tensions along three key axes. First Japan confronts a tension between bilateralism and multilateralism; second Japan's economic and security interests are often at odds, and third, Japan still struggles with the competing pulls exerted by Asia on the one hand and the West (most particularly the United States) on the other.     

Economic calculation in the Soviet Union

The article seeks to analyse the relationship between different forms of economic calculation in the Soviet Union, concentrating on monetary calculations used by the State Bank and on the use of ‘material balances’ and of input‐output analysis in planning the Soviet economy. It provides a critique of Bettelheim's analysis of the role of monetary calculation in the Soviet Union and, using the work of Lavigne, attempts to provide a foundation for a specific analysis of economic calculation (and hence, relations of production) in the Soviet Union. The article concludes by arguing that the variety of methods of calculating used in the Soviet Union, and the generation of ‘needs’ by organisational exigencies which may not be fully taken into account in the main methods of calculation, undermine the common conception of planning as the rational pursuit of certain ideal ends, a conception which is unfortunately still influential in many socialist conceptions of planning. Finally, in rejecting the view that one can conceive of socialism as a certain ideal state of affairs, the article argues that political critiques of the Soviet Union do not entail the rejection of the view that it is a socialist society.     

Mark Swatek-Evenstein: A History of Humanitarian Intervention

Liverpool Law Review -     

Michael P. Scharf,Milena Sterio & Paul R. Williams: The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 378 pp, £85 hardback,ISBN: 9781108491532

Liverpool Law Review -