The Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook 2014 analyses contemporary world events, drawing on foundational ideas in various academic disciplines. The year 2014 was the centenary of the start of the First World War and the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy landings in the Second World War. The year saw violent conflict in Ukraine and the rise of the Islamic State in parts of Syria and Iraq. A referendum was held in Scotland to decide whether to stay in the UK. Centrist parties lost ground in the European Parliament elections and a general election was held in India, the biggest ever election in the world. Thomas Piketty sparked debate with his analysis of growing inequality in capitalist economies. Politicians in the UK talked about ‘British values’ and debated ‘is Britain Christian?’ The British Museum lent one of the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Putin made overtures to China. In California, Elliot Rodger went on the rampage, killing six people. Malala Yousafzay won the Nobel Peace Prize, Maryam Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal and Judit Polgar retired from international chess. Germany won the World Cup in Brazil. Echoes of the Big Bang confirmed the theory of how the universe began. The 2014 Yearbook discusses these events alongside a variety of other specific events and general issues. In addition, this book includes the speech given by Kevin Avruch when he was joint recipient of the Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize 2014 for his book Context and Pretext in Conflict Resolution.

World events in 2017 have revealed the fundamental features of social systems and their trajectories. Is the world becoming a better place in terms of wellbeing, wealth, health, peace and the environment? The structure of power is changing, with the prominent roles played by Trump, Putin and Xi, and, while the West is growing and still dominant, the relative growth in the East is greater. Other cultural formations, such as languages, religions and political cultures, have also risen and fallen. How have different social groups related to one another, and how have social divisions manifested themselves in the different systems of society? An analysis of the surprising election in the UK here leads to a gravitational model of party trajectories in political space, while the fascinating 358-year trajectory of mathematical knowledge relating to Fermat’s Last Theorem and modularity is also presented. As such, this is a book about peace and conflict, politics, international relations, social science and quantitative methods.

The Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook 2015, like the 2014 Yearbook, analyses contemporary world events with special attention to values, drawing on foundational ideas in a variety of academic disciplines. World society in 2015 exhibited economic, political and cultural tensions: growth and austerity; the Greek bailout referendum; the Paris attacks on the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists; the Christian south and Muslim north in the Nigerian elections; and religion and secularism in Ireland’s referendum on same-sex marriage. Demographics, austerity, migration and nationalism were all issues in the UK general election. There were debates about immigration into Europe and debates about Western military intervention. There were debates about the Enlightenment surrounding the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo. The year 2015 was the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, and the centenary of the birth of one of those who attended the San Francisco conference in 1945, namely John Burton, founder of the Conflict Research Society. Chapter Two of the Yearbook is “The John Burton Memorial Lecture 2015”, by Kevin Clements. Other guest contributors are Feargal Cochrane, Hugh Miall, Dennis Sandole and Rania Dimitraki. The modelling aspect of the Yearbook is strongly structured around the notions of space, time and value. Six of the chapters are about space – physical space, geographical space, psychological space, social space, political space and value space. Four of the chapters are about time: time series for human development and population; revisiting the Pinker debate about a decline in violence; physical and structural violence; the 1945–2015 UK decline in two-party and three-party politics; the flight from the centre and the rise of UKIP and Jeremy Corbyn. The chapter “Life is a Journey” discusses values in a qualitative way, then models of values are developed for particular topics and finally a systematic account is given of value spaces.

The 2018 edition of The Global Community: Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence constitutes the only thorough annual survey of major developments in international courts. General Editor Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo selects excerpts from important court opinions, supported by contributors who provide expert guidance on those cases. The topical organization and subject index make the thorough, comprehensive content easy to navigate.

This book provides a global perspective on the various issues that the industry has to face as well as to provide some key global strategies that can help coping with those global challenges, such as collaboration, strategic value chain planning, and interdependency analyses. It presents literature reviews, strategic research orientations, assessment of some current key issues, and state-of-the-art methodologies.

Volume 1 (A and B) covers international organizations throughout the world, comprising their aims, activities and events.

People now view digital services and applications as an essential part of their lives and as carriers of great benefits. Nevertheless, because they provide a new space for criminals, terrorists and others with malicious intent, digital technologies also present significant threats. How can we maintain the freedom and benefits offered by the digital ecosystem while also building into that system safeguards against attacks? The Digital Enlightenment Forum (DigEnlight) takes the view that the new regulatory and legal safeguards required for our digital world must be developed within a framework that incorporates what they call 'digital ethics'. This White Book attempts to draw together the various strands which have emerged from the intense debate within DigEnlight over the last three years. It focuses on how we can negotiate the changing emergent behavior and ethical issues that arise at the heart of debates about the digital world, covering areas such as national security, internet governance, and approaches to privacy and trust, as well as making recommendations to help realize a global social compact for digital security and privacy based on ethical principles. The book represents a meaningful contribution to the ongoing efforts to deal with these important issues, and will be of interest to all those with concerns about the future of our digital world.