A Prolegomenon to Responsible Legislative Reform

When you're young it's easy to streak appeals across the sky like rockets. But as you get older you feel increasingly esponsible for those traveling the road your rocket lights. What if you've led them wrong? You grow wary of making reckless appeals, and a sense of responsibility must be tempered above all with analysis and reflection. Relentless analysis alone, not childish shouting, embodies the true appeals.¹     

Bands of brothers: a re‐appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its implications for the Scandinavian colonization of England

Although the ninth‐century Viking Great Army has been subject to intensive historical and archaeological study, it remains an enigmatic entity. This article explores the evidence for the Great Army in England through the consideration of archaeological materials in addition to the organizational structures underpinning the formation of Viking ‘armies’. In light of this, I argue that the Great Army is better considered as a mobile society or polity rather than an armed force. Viewing the Great Army in this way influences not only the interpretation of evidence recovered in the field, but also our understanding of the Scandinavian settlement of northern and eastern England during the late ninth century.     

Islamic Caliphate or nation state? Investigating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's imagined community

Through the lens of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Community concept, this paper examines how the selected community‐building theories are useful in understanding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its imagined community. Using four factors—language, education, power and history—derived from Anderson's Imagined Community concept, this paper applies theories of Modernism, Primordialism and Insurgency Governance to explain ISIL's imagined community. Specifically, our argument is threefold: (a) Anderson's Imagined Community concept and alternate theories of community building, although insightful, does an imperfect job at describing ISIL's Caliphate; (b) ISIL's group structure appears to transcend traditional and accepted notions of nations, nationalism and nation states; and (c) based on this reasoning, ISIL's Caliphate can be considered an outlier in community‐building literature analysed.