Building on Chapter 3, one would expect that free and fair elections, as well as expansive democratic citizenship would translate to considerably different strategies and claims making in Johannesburg, South Africa. Yet, on the contrary, urban communities in Johannesburg have been engaging in housing protests using unruly tactics and populist claims that are surprisingly similar to the tradition of bread uprisings in Cairo. In this case, residents have drawn on the history of township protests developed in the fight against apartheid, as well as the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the ANC. Using archives and interviews, I trace the history of popular rights to housing developed alongside a set of insurgent practices of riots, boycotts, and land occupations. They have formed a foundation that still informs housing protests in the township today, with communities combining unruly protest with electoral and legal mobilization. More broadly, this chapter challenges assumptions about what politics in a democracy is supposed to look like.

The approach of equity theory and other justice-based psychological theories to intergroup relations is criticlly examined in this chapter. The discussion includes consideration of distinctions between distributive and procedural justice, rights and duties, and natural law and positive law. The equity theory proposition that the ratio of inputs and outcomes determine subjective justice is examined, with research examples of how the ratio works. Lerner’s just world theory is also discussed, with research examples. The applied implications of equity theory and just world theory are also examined, as are the relationship between these theories and other major theories of intergroup relations.

Hobbes’s introduction, in Leviathan, of a somewhat extensive liberty for subjects to disobey the sovereign, raises some difficult questions concerning the obligation of subjects to obey an all-powerful sovereign, which has traditionally been seen as central to Hobbes’s argument. In Leviathan, Hobbes strengthens the rights of subjects to such a degree that we are forced to reconsider his understanding of political obligation. The chapter argues that there is an irresolvable tension between the requirement for obedience to the sovereign and Hobbes’s conviction that each individual should be able to act freely to survive in the short term and to provide for their protection in the long term, even when that means disobeying the sovereign. An examination of what Hobbes says about the subjects’ rights in Leviathan shows that, in contrast to his earlier political works, the rights do not come to an end once the sovereign is instituted. Rather, he argues that while some rights are given up or transferred, some are inalienable and must be retained. The chapter explores the implications this has for the relationship of the individual subject to the sovereign and for Hobbes’s argument more generally.

In this chapter, we review the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in developing and using AI systems, with a particular focus on our role as (competent) citizens. It is important, thus, to understand our rights and obligations in order to advance to a safer and more trustworthy AI implementation in our daily lives.

This chapter examines Meta’s Oversight Board, a pioneering experiment in governance by emulation that adapts individual rights adjudication to the private governance of social media platforms. Operational since 2020, the Board has been celebrated as a step toward greater accountability while also criticized as a superficial PR strategy. Through its structure, practices, and public perception, the Board blends public- and private-law principles, presenting itself as operationally independent and adjudicating disputes based on international human rights norms. However, its circumscribed authority raises questions about its capacity to elicit substantive structural change at Meta. The chapter situates the Oversight Board as an Emulated Guardian, designed to mimic adjudication but primarily serving as a performative tool to lend legitimacy to Meta’s content moderation. While initially dismissed as symbolic, the Board’s incremental expansion of its guardianship role highlights its dialectical potential: it is both limited by its private nature and empowered by its adjudicatory appearance. This case study progresses through six analytical steps, exploring the Board’s origins, institutional structure, decision-making processes, and practical impact, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of regulating private power in a globalized digital environment.

The loss of community is often seen as one of the reasons for the alienating experience of modernity. Community seems to allow for a civic-minded solidarity that counteracts the legitimation crisis of democracy by returning agency to citizens. Such a demand for a communitarian correction to liberal constitutional democracy is not without dangers, even when this demand is intended to stand in the service of a more democratic life. This chapter traces the fate of this communitarian desire in a broader transatlantic field, highlighting the uncanny connections among the philosophical debate about communitarianism, the antidemocratic and authoritarian drift in American conservative political and legal thought, and central aspects of European neofascism. These connections should make us suspicious about the democratic potential often ascribed to community. The ease with which arguments for a communitarian correction of democracy can be used against democracy suggests that community lacks an intrinsically democratic and emancipatory potential.

Chapter 4 shows that while one cannot deny Swift’s use of a Tory “conspiracy thesis” in foreign policy tracts like The Conduct of the Allies, Swift relied more heavily on legitimate arguments and sources of international politics and law that have been underrated: Aristotle, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf. Aristotle taught a concept of foreign policy centered on constitutionalism, geography, naval power, self-defense, and public reason. Grotius and Pufendorf provided a foundation of natural and international law, as well as just war theory, that was secular yet grounded on classical learning and Christian ethics. Grotius’s underappreciated influence undermines the idea that Swift’s politics were purely Hobbesian, realist, or authoritarian. Swift had a realist and an idealist strain but “Grotian rationalism” predominated in the controversy over the Utrecht Peace. Grotius also fed Swift’s growing skepticism about the Whig concept of the balance of power.

Inclusion is a term used frequently, but what does it really mean? Inclusion in its simplest term is ‘the action or state of including or of being included within a group or structure’ (Oxford Dictionary). This is a fundamental right of all people, but unfortunately when diversity exists, this is not a right afforded to everyone. The Oxford Dictionary has an alternate definition which elaborates on this initial one. Inclusion is also defined as ‘the practice or policy or providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those who have physical or intellectual disabilities and members of other minority groups’. As recognised in this definition, inclusion is about opportunities for all, including those with disability, developmental delay, neurodivergence, mental health difficulties, cultural diversity, variations in socio-economic status, LGBTQIA+ people, gender diversity, people experiencing trauma, unique family structures, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, just to name a few! While there are differences in what every individual needs to be included, the principles of inclusion and the foundation of everyone having the same rights, should not change.

Working with others is at the heart of inclusive practice. In early childhood education and care, no single professional can meet the full range of strengths, needs and identities that children bring with them. Inclusion becomes possible when educators, families and external professionals think, plan and act together with shared intent. This chapter explores what it means to build strong, respectful and coordinated partnerships across a service and beyond the gate. It positions early childhood education settings as relational spaces where collaboration supports participation, wellbeing and belonging for children with disabilities, developmental differences and neurodivergence, as well as for children and families navigating complex circumstances. Drawing on Australian frameworks and research, the chapter offers practical ways educators can participate confidently in cross-sector collaboration while holding children’s rights, agency, and cultural identities at the centre.

Chapter 4 examines local concepts of right(s), dissecting the ways in which brokering and begging were viewed as charitable compensations for the lack of government protection for disabled people, but claimed by the recipients as forms of work. Aspiring to have their activities recognised as rights, they spoke a local language of entitlement that conflated the value of independent work with the ethical and political right to care, asserting obligatory rights or taxes, against the donors’ perception of gifts. The language of ‘rights’ is a space of mutual evaluation, a rich and powerful language for discussing issues of inequality, membership, personhood, welfare, and power in Kinshasa today. It is perhaps most significant as a claim for distribution than as a legal premise of entitlements. Here, the question of a rightful share becomes pertinent, as givers and receivers evoked differing views on the same transaction that expressed contradictory aspirations and values. In the absence of formal institutions to enforce informal disability privileges, people had to recognise the right to be beggars or brokers on an interpersonal level, requiring constant value tests on whether claims to assistance were legitimate. The chapter thus disrupts the classic Maussian focus on giving and production to consider the moral and political controversies associated with asking and distribution.