This chapter examines the rise of regular mass, public giving, through initiatives such as Save the Children’s Penny-a-Week scheme in thousand of factories, Christian Aid Week and the hundreds of branches of Oxfam, War on Want and Save the Children that initiated a huge variety of fundraising activities. Britain was a nation of givers, but the perennial problem of humanitarian fundraising was always apparent: that people gave in response to immediate suffering when the charities were committed to long-term aid. This chapter reviews the publicity materials and surveys of public opinion to examine the persistent nature of the problem, demonstrating the extent to which an incredibly self-aware sector has nevertheless been locked into the pursuit of fundraising tactics which it knows are far from appropriate. One consequence was the discrepancies in attitudes to poverty overseas and immigration in the UK. The Commonwealth, as both a post-imperial entity and as a facilitator of aid interventions, remained crucial to the imagination of what charity meant overseas. But when that Commonwealth came home – via immigration – the silences of the humanitarian charity spoke volumes too.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

The chapter introduces the origins of the plebiscite as a tool of international politics, and examines Sarah Wambaugh’s early career in the American women’s peace and suffrage movements. Wambaugh began researching the plebiscite following American entry into the First World War in 1917, and her early contributions reflected her youthful idealism and embrace of the principle of the self-determination of nations pronounced by Woodrow Wilson. Her early works may have influenced the peacemakers during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919; however, the plebiscites that resulted were more frequently the result of instrumental bargaining among the victorious powers. If the plebiscite was not used as consistently as advocates such as Wambaugh would have liked, a major achievement was the inclusion of women’s suffrage in nearly all plebiscites written into the post-war settlement. In this the first plebiscite decided upon for the Danish–German border region of Schleswig set an important precedent.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

In 1968, the humanitarian and development charity Oxfam asked a simple question: does aid work? What this meant in practice was that it appointed Bernard Llewellyn as its first Aid Appraiser. His conclusions were that roughly 50 percent of most aid work was wasted and ill-spent, too often on what he disparaged as ‘monuments to human folly’. That the organisation continued to support such initiatives he blamed on the ‘Oxfam bias’. There was always somebody to claim that aid worked. Llewellyn’s criticisms, and those who followed him, were acknowledged but the sector has been able to absorb them and move on. Indeed, a development studies literature has pointed to the self-perpetuating nature of aid work more generally: the ‘anti-politics machine’. One consequence has been that, if it is not known what works, then it is not known either what contribution charity has to the mixed economy of overseas welfare. That this has never been determined is not only a reflection of the ongoing disputes about the meaning of charity itself but also the reason for its subsequent growth.

Arbitration has had a long history in the United Kingdom and the United States. For many centuries, it has been widely used for the settlement of a variety of disputes between states, state entities and private parties and between private parties inter se. In England, the integration of equity and common law proceeded gradually until the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it slowed down and came to a halt. Thereafter, law and equity flowed in separate channels; and for many hundred years, much of the ethical content of English law consisted of principles of equity developed and applied in a separate court. Equity was used to correct the inadequacies and precedent-bound decisions of the common law in jurisdictions including the United States. But the situations in which and principles upon which relief was granted became in the course of time so well defined that equity developed into a technical branch of the law like what it was intended to correct. Reliance on equity to bring about a balance between legal rights and the interests of those persons who would be seriously harmed by their strict enforcement became less frequent, with the result that equitable principles as to what was fair and just were far less widely used in Anglo-American law than in any of the other great legal systems in the world. The simultaneous existence of two systems of substantive law in modern times is a phenomenon peculiar to common law countries. In two competing systems in the same body of law, the concept of ‘equity’ came to be regarded as an act of grace; it could not be demanded as of right.

Since 1931, the two powers China and Japan had fought intermittently in localised engagements. In 1937, however, these conflicts turned into a full-scale war between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China governed by Chiang Kai-shek's (1887–1975) Guomindang, which entered into an alliance with the Chinese communists. The Second Sino-Japanese War which had begun with a local conflict near Beijing (the Marco Polo Bridge incident) ushered in four years of Chinese resistance against an expanding enemy before it became part of the global Second World War, following Japan's simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor and European colonies in Southeast Asia in 1941. The conflict in East Asia evoked various responses from humanitarian organisations and actors abroad. However, some relief initiatives decided not to take up this new cause and to continue to concentrate on the ongoing Spanish Civil War. In other cases, offers to help were declined by Japan. The international humanitarian system that emerged during the first four years of the war in support of China was majorly sustained by non-state initiatives, both established and newly founded ones. The latter especially were hardly impartial in their aid giving and often also had political motives in addition to altruistic ones. They came from strong left-leaning backgrounds and/or were rooted in diasporic Chinese, missionary or philanthropic communities.

In India, political and social actors and organisations and the press had, for a long time, followed the developments in East Asia. The outbreak of the war brought forward the question of humanitarian relief for the belligerent parties.

The High Commissioner for India, Sir S. E. Runganadhan (1877–1966), extolled the work of the Indian Comforts Fund (ICF) in the foreword to the fund's War Record as ‘a remarkable piece of humanitarian work carried out during the war largely by British women for the benefit of India's fighting men and merchant seamen’. After providing a short overview of the fund's work between 1939 and 1945, the High Commissioner expressed his and his country's gratitude by writing, ‘India will ever remain deeply indebted to them [the members of the fund's executive committee and the host of unseen helpers throughout Great Britain] for this practical expression of their sympathy and goodwill towards her.’ Although the imperial tone of this message, coming from the High Commissioner appointed by the colonial government in Delhi, might not come as a surprise, the used framing of India's indebtedness for British humanitarian assistance to Indian soldiers and merchant seamen (lascars) who had done their share to contribute to Britain's and the empire's war effort must have been puzzling for many contemporaries on the subcontinent. Next to doubting the underlying idea of the voluntariness of India's war contribution, they might also have raised questions about who should be indebted to whom.

Early in the war, the fund's public appeals for support in the form of knitted comforts and donations had struck a different note. Back in the spring of 1940, the fund had justified its appeal by emphasising that Indian soldiers had ‘come so far across the sea to help in our [the British] war effort’.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms are complementary to court proceedings and have gained wide acceptance. The main advantage of ADR techniques is that litigants are not bound by the technicalities of ordinary court procedures. Society, the state and parties to a dispute are equally under an obligation to resolve the dispute before it disturbs the peace in the family, business community and, ultimately, humanity as a whole, because a civilised society implies the application of the rule of law and principles of natural justice. In fact, arbitration, one such ADR mechanism, has a long tradition in many countries, and India too has an age-old tradition of settlement of disputes through arbitration and conciliation. In ancient rural India, panchayats were a forum for the settlement of disputes. In villages, disputes were not to be taken to the courts of law; instead, they were referred to the panchayats consisting of village elders who commanded great respect. The village panchayats were so called because each consisted of five (panch) elders, who used to preside over civil, criminal and family disputes; these five elders were referred to as panch parameswar (equating them to the gods). This system worked successfully in the villages and was independent of state authority and control. The concept of parties settling their disputes in a binding manner by referring them to a person or persons of their choice or private tribunals was thus well known in ancient and medieval India. Appeals were also often made against the decisions of such persons or tribunals to the courts of judges appointed by the king and, ultimately, to the king himself.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.