In this paper we assess the impact of the financial crisis on insurance markets and the role of the insurance industry in the crisis itself. We examine some previous "insurance crises" and consider the effect of the crisis on insurance risk-the liabilities arising from contracts that insurers underwrite. We then analyse the effects of the crisis on the performance of insurers in different markets and assess the extent of systemic risk in insurance. We conclude that, while systemic risk remains lower in insurance than in the banking sector, it is not negligible and has grown in recent years, partly as a consequence of insurers' increasing links with banks and their recent focus on non-(traditional) insurance activities, including structured finance. We conclude by considering the structural changes in the insurance industry that are likely to result from the crisis, including possible effects on "bancassurance" activity, and offer some thoughts on changes in the regulation of insurance markets that might ensue.

In this article, I offer a reassessment of the influence of two disparate bodies of thought – republicanism and existentialism – on Hannah Arendt. Arendt, I argue, is not involved in an ‘agonistic appropriation’ of Heidegger. Arendt identifies two opposed attitudes in Heidegger’s work. The first Promethean moment places Heidegger squarely in the tradition of Western political philosophy, and the second seemingly correcting for this recommends a quietism. Arendt rejects both these attitudes. Machiavelli rather than Heidegger, I argue, is the key influence on Arendt's political thought. Through a reading of Arendt’s published works and her unpublished 1955 lecture notes on Machiavelli I show that the central categories of Arendt’s thought emerge from her meditation on Machiavelli’s texts. Arendt finds in Machiavelli a performative understanding of politics, an accurate understanding of the connection between morality and politics, and a primacy given to politics that she thought it deserves.

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This paper deals with Zuckert's book Machiavelli's Politics. It takes as its point of departure Zuckert's remark that Machiavelli is “surprisingly like Socrates.” The paper begins with a brief discussion of what makes a Socratic philosopher and then charts out the many similarities between Socrates and Machiavelli. Responses are offered to some of the key reservations against terming Machiavelli a Socratic. In particular, the paper points to a less activist and more meditative mode in Machiavelli's writings that allows one to make a more convincing case for a Socratic Machiavelli.

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