The multiple streams framework in a nondemocracy: The infeasibility of a national ban on live poultry sales in China

In response to calls to apply the multiple streams framework to nondemocracies, this article adapts the framework to an authoritarian context and applies it to a case study of live poultry sales in food markets in China, a key issue in epidemic prevention. Using a dataset consisting of Chinese policy documents, Chinese news articles, World Health Organization data, and secondary literature, the study shows that despite the public health threat posed by live poultry sales and despite high-level political support, a national-level permanent ban has not been adopted because it is technically infeasible, financially inviable, and inconsistent with existing norms and values. The study suggests that—despite the country's top-down governance style and lack of political pluralism—policy preferences expressed by members of the policy-making elite are not necessarily adopted in authoritarian China. Future research should test the proposed hypotheses in other policy areas and other authoritarian contexts.     

The Trade in Individual Maps from Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum after 1612

In 1612, following the death of the Antwerp print publisher Jan Baptist Vrients, Balthasar I and Jan Moretus II, at the time the managers of the Plantin Press, bought the copper plates used to print Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarium, together with the remainder of Vrients’s stock of the atlas. Subsequently, they reissued various editions of the Theatrum, selling them under their own names. They also traded in individual maps from the Theatrum, printing more when necessary. Hundreds of maps were sent to clients all over Europe. This article gives an overview of this so far unknown distribution of Ortelius’s maps in the first half of the seventeenth century.     

Arnau de Vilanova at the summit of Oloron (1287): a major inflection point in the life of a medieval physician

In July 1287, during mediation by Edward I for the release of Charles, prince of Salerno, the kings of England and Aragon met with Charles' representatives at a large assembly at Oloron in Béarn, on the edge of the Pyrenees west of Bayonne. An English document deriving from this meeting reveals the presence there of the famous physician Arnau de Vilanova, a member of the Aragonese party, and recipient of a gift from the king of England. This article demonstrates how this document and other recent discoveries, properly contextualised, can illuminate an obscure period in Arnau's life in which he turned towards a new pattern of existence.