Cuba’s current economic struggles are due to a number of factors. These include an economic structure resulting from colonialism and neocolonialism and Cuba’s geopolitical alliance with the Soviet Union, which had mixed results in terms of economic performance. In the twenty-first century, there have been attempts in Cuba at market-oriented structural reforms, without a great deal of success. Thus far, these reforms have not shown major significant macroeconomic effects. However, it cannot plausibly be denied that Cuba’s post-1959 development strategy has been severely impacted by the system of unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the US. The US’s system of unilateral coercive economic sanctions disrupts Cuba’s international economic relations by making it expensive and risky for other countries to do business with the island and causing Cuba’s investment in infrastructure to perform below expectations. Sanctions create obstacles to accessing new technologies and foreign direct investment for key sectors of the Cuban economy, such as biotechnology and tourism, both of which are important elements of Cuba’s development strategy. Consequently, the US system of unilateral coercive measures affects Cuba’s overall economic health, has inflicted considerable damage to the Cuban population, and has interfered in many ways with the realization of Cuba’s development goals, violating the island nation’s right to development.

This chapter concludes the book with a discussion of how China’s model of digital governance applies to China post-Covid and after the anti-trust campaign. Popular corporatism emerged from policy decisions aimed at addressing the digital dilemma and is shaped by reflections on and learning from the past. These decisions involved conversations with technology companies and their profit-seeking innovations, which offered solutions to concrete policy problems. However, such conversations were not devoid of contestation when interests misalign. The anti-trust campaign reveals the challenges in reducing corporate influence while reaping the benefits of data concentration. Citizens are not easily fooled either, as seen in protests against the abuse of government-led social credit ratings in enforcing China’s zero-Covid policy. Since the logic of popular corporatism is not unique to China, the chapter discusses implications for understanding the role of Chinese, Russian, and US-based technology companies in other authoritarian contexts. An important precondition for the application to other contexts is the state’s economic resources. Concluding with an eye on liberal democracy, the chapter emphasizes one key lesson from China’s digital governance – the power of a positive vision in uniting the interactions between the state, platform firms, and citizens.

The 1948 Berlin Blockade did not escalate to war, largely because Truman and Stalin did not want another world war so soon. Atomic weapons played no obvious role. The fear of atomic weapons did not deter Stalin – who lacked such weapons – from initiating the crisis. They also played no role in ending the crisis, since Truman made no explicit threat to use them. Instead, the airlift defeated the blockade, and Stalin ended the crisis. In contrast, nuclear weapons played a clearer role in the 1958–1962 Berlin Crisis. Both sides now had a second-strike capability, but that deterred neither Khrushchev from initiating the crisis nor Kennedy from considering nuclear war. Nevertheless, the possibility of a nuclear war made each leader more prudent. As the crisis evolved, large numbers of East Germans started crossing into West Berlin. Ulbricht, the leader of East Germany, pleaded with Khrushchev to do something. Khrushchev permitted the construction of a wall (although Kennedy may have signaled his non-opposition). This ended the refugee flow and, therefore, the immediate crisis. The Berlin Crises intensified the Cold War. They led to the formation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, as well as the division of Germany into two states.

Italian unification ultimately emerges through four wars. This chapter covers the second of these wars (1859–1860). Austria holds sovereignty over territory in northern Italy. Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont, learns from the first war (1848) that Piedmont cannot defeat Austria – and therefore wrest Italian lands from it – without a powerful ally. He secures an alliance with Napoleon III of France, and at a secret meeting in Plombières, Piedmont and France plot a war. The Italian nationalists argue that the “people” of a nation have a legitimate right to self-rule. The Concert plays no role in this crisis because it does not see the norm of nationalism as a legitimate justification for owning territory. In its view, the norm of dynastic succession (i.e., a king or queen coming to the throne) serves that purpose. The Concert system is therefore biased against the nationalists. The resulting clash of norms increases the probability of war. Nevertheless, territorial issues are generally more war-prone than non-territorial issues, and infusing territorial disagreements with nationalism and identity (or ethnic) claims raises the probability of war further. In the end, the case illustrates well why and how territorial issues lead to war.

Pearl Harbor demonstrates that war can occur when coercion (e.g., economic sanctions) works too well. To investigate this dynamic, we also engage another important, but controversial, question in this case – namely, whether the United States (US) president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) deliberately sought war with Japan as a way to enter the war in Europe. Contrary to some scholars, our analysis concludes that FDR was aware of the total oil embargo that Acheson implemented and that FDR wanted war. Indeed, the US made only one serious attempt to avoid war – the modus vivendi proposal. FDR supported the proposal because he thought it would give the US more time to prepare. Tojo may have entertained the proposal, but he never received it because Chiang Kai-shek and Churchill vetoed it. The latter needed the US to intervene in the war to increase their chances of winning. This is yet another example of alliances promoting war – in this instance, by vetoing a peace proposal. Finally, we consider why Japan was willing to attack the US, even though it knew the US was more powerful.

This chapter investigates moderating factors such as trust-related mechanisms, norms, and institutions, and their ability to explain the relationship between intrinsic motivation and compliance, which is free of regulatory coercion.

The chapter analyzes the crisis and expansion of human rights in the 1970s as a dual phenomenon of the population control movement. It explores the disillusionment among population control activists due to the failure to achieve desired fertility rate reductions despite international efforts. The chapter highlights the shift in perspectives on the human rights framework for population control, with criticisms emerging from various actors including demographers, sociologists, and international organizations. The chapter also discusses the emergence of new actors such as the women’s movement in advocating for human rights in family planning. It argues that UN reports on family planning were shaped by conflicting political imaginaries between UN member states along Cold War and North–South divides. Furthermore, it delves into the debates among international lawyers regarding coercion, national sovereignty, and the role of international law in addressing population growth. It argues that international lawyers saw the legal regulation of population control as a test of the effectivness of international law as such.

Post-genocide Rwanda serves as a case of strong institutional control in which the government engages transitional justice through a strategy of coercion. In this chapter I explore the Rwandan government’s response to international pressure for accountability. To advance government impunity, the government adopts a strategy of coercion, wherein a new transitional justice institution, gacaca, is implemented but subsequently monitored and controlled to advance state impunity and consolidate RPF control. The chapter begins with an overview of armed conflict in Rwanda with particular attention on the complexities of the violence experienced by individuals during the civil war, genocide, and at the hands of the RPF. I then discuss the government’s strategic adaptation of transitional justice to identify and evaluate the coercive strategy in which claims for government accountability are monitored and controlled. I explore the strategy of coercion in practice through an in-depth analysis of gacaca, which has aggressively pursued crimes of genocide while ignoring RPF abuses. To explore the coercion strategy beyond the case of Rwanda, I examine transitional justice in Burundi.

While Chapter 4 outlines the national pattern of visibility projects and the forced exit of private firms from the urban bus sector, this chapter uses comparative case studies, in-depth interviews, and process tracing to explore the causal mechanism linking visibility projects to deprivatization. Guangzhou and Nanning, two capital cities in neighboring provinces in southern China, are selected for a most-similar case comparison. Guangzhou deprivatized its bus sector in 2007, whereas Nanning continues to have a privately controlled bus sector.

Guangzhou initiated multiple visibility projects in its urban bus sector, driven by ambitious city leaders seeking attention from the Party-state. In contrast, Nanning launched only a few projects, as its city leaders sought to avoid attention following recent political turmoil. By contrasting these two cases and demonstrating why deprivatization occurred in Guangzhou but not in Nanning, this chapter illustrates how visibility projects led to the end of marketization in China’s urban bus sector.

Even in the most mundane sectors, firms are still required to provide political services. This chapter examines how the urban bus sector across Chinese cities became a focal point for visibility projects starting in the early 2000s and how this trend led to an uncoordinated, nationwide deprivatization of the urban bus sector by city governments beginning in 2005. These actions contradicted policies that encouraged private provision of bus services.

Using an original dataset on visibility projects and sectoral data from 288 Chinese cities covering the urban bus sector between 1996 and 2016, the chapter demonstrates how successive waves of visibility projects were closely linked to the reversal of marketization in the sector. The chapter opens with an account from a city government official describing their efforts to force private firms out of the urban bus sector, and is enriched with detailed interview notes throughout.

Kant’s criticisms between the Groundwork (1785) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) do not eradicate perfectionism but transpose it to a new register, the perfection of freedom itself and the conditions of its exercise. Kant’s evocative but incomplete statements of his political position after 1785 elicit numerous debates among Kantians on the basis and limits of state action. Early Kantians view progress as the outcropping of spontaneous freedom, not as administered and imposed. These debates, involving Hufeland, Reinhold, and Humboldt, offer various combinations of Leibnizian and Kantian ideas. In response to Kant’s Groundwork, Hufeland justifies legitimate political constraint through its contribution to systemic perfection. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s early formulation of the limits of state action derives from Kantian anti-paternalism, the Groundwork assertion of the inviolability of rational beings, combined with a modified Leibnizian monadology admitting interaction. His defence of a minimalist state is a possible but not a necessary consequence of Kantian premises. It draws criticism from Karl von Dalberg, who defends Wolffian reformist interventionism.

In the Feyerabend lecture Kant already presents his claim that the principle of right is a principle of coercion, that is, that the state is authorized to use coercion to counteract an unauthorized violation of universal freedom. Such state use of force is a hinderance of a hinderance to freedom. But how is this coercive power specified in particular circumstances? I examine three extreme cases in which a state might be authorized to use its coercive power against its own citizens to cause their deaths: capital punishment, eminent right in emergencies, and war. This paper will show that Kant offered specific explanations of particular limits to legitimate state power, rejecting different limits offered by Beccaria (capital punishment), Achenwall (eminent right and war), and Vattel (war). These assessments reveal that Kant was of several minds regarding whether in any social contract a citizen could rationally consent to these uses of coercion and whether actual or only hypothetical consent was required. I suggest that only later in the published Doctrine of Right did Kant work out his position consistently.

Kant’s 1784 lectures on Achenwall is commonly known as the Feyerabend lectures because the manuscript was attributed to Gottfried Feyerabend. These lectures range over the topics eventually treated in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1798), which include both right and ethics. From these lectures we learn how Kant thought about the concepts of end in itself, self-sufficient end and human dignity just prior to writing the Groundwork (1785). Kant accepts much of what he finds in Achenwall, but also advances criticisms of the concept of obligation found in Achenwall and also in Baumgarten. He also rejects Achenwall’s attempt to justify coercion of duties of right simply through the distinction, common in the tradition since Pufundorf, between perfect and imperfect duties. The present discussion concludes that in the 1780s Kant’s position on the relation of right to ethics was still unclear. He appears to base right on the ethical value of humanity as end in itself, but also worries that grounding right on an ethical principle cannot explain why duties of right may be coerced.

The distinction between coercion and conversion is not always clear, and it is suggested here that this is because both are types of metonymy and it is not always clear when there is a shift from one word-class to another and when there is not.