This chapter analyzes how social policy in China has contributed to the well-being of the middle class and their trust of the government. The author argues that if we examine not just China’s earlier reform period (1978–2003) and the fast-growing era (2003–2012), but also the sharp Left Turn in recent years (2012–present), it is hard to fit China’s social policy into the theories of productivism or developmental welfare state that are often associated with the East Asian countries. China’s welfare system is an instrumentalist model which is centered on maintaining the leadership of the Communist Party of China. With this in mind, social policies have been actively used in the past few years to support two mutually independent but intersecting intermediate goals: maintaining economic development and social stability. Both are vital to the party’s authority.

A careful examination of the idea of democracy suggests that democracy is not best understood as a form of government that is unconditionally responsive to the preferences of the majority. In particular, a will-based conception of democracy—which assigns effectively unlimited power to the majority—can claim support neither in the intellectual history of democracy nor in a plausible interpretation of the idea of democracy. The western democratic tradition is contractualist, and that tradition works from the foundational intuition that legitimate power derives from the consent of the governed. That intuition justifies majority rule as an important element of social choice, but it also requires the entrenchment of rights protections as an element of any acceptable set of political institutions. If entrenched rights are to provide effective protections to liberty interests, they must be enforced by an institution that is not subject to majority control; a “constraint” on the will of the majority that is controlled by the majority is no constraint. Democratic institutions must therefore include an institution independent of majority control whose purpose is to enforce rights protections against the majority.

The “democratic” character of the representative legislature is routinely contrasted with the undemocratic character of courts administered by unelected judges. Since the legislature allegedly possesses a democratic pedigree while the courts allegedly lack such a pedigree, it is argued that the courts should defer to the legislature on questions regarding fundamental social values. I argue that this view does not survive a careful examination of the history and character of representative government and the judiciary. Representative government was designed to assign decisive political power to elites whose qualities distinguish them from the average citizen. The legislature, therefore, hardly possesses an impeccable democratic pedigree. The democratic pedigree of courts exercising the power of judicial review, on the other hand, is stronger than has been generally appreciated. The democratic pedigree of the Constitution is superior to that of statutory law because the Constitution represents a more fundamental and direct expression of the public will than statutory law. The courts, in exercising the power of judicial review to enforce constitutional requirements, can therefore plausibly claim a democratic pedigree—within their areas of competence—at least equal to that of the legislature.

How were seventeenth-century projects of wetland improvement remembered and revived in the centuries that followed? What remnants of wetlands past persist in popular memory, troublesome spirits, floodwaters, and nature reserves? This chapter traces afterlives of the turbulence and tumult generated by fen projects. In doing so, it weaves together the key strands of this book. First, new intellectual and political tools were needed to define and implement wetland improvement, reconceiving the scale of environmental thought and action in early modern England. Second, customary politics proved a powerful force in the negotiation of improvement as commoners intervened in the flow of water, the exercise of property rights, and the practice of sovereignty. Finally, coercive projects of environmental change expanded cracks in the exercise of central authority, becoming entangled in civil war conflict and imperilling the stability of improvement. It concludes by asking what conflict over early modern wetlands can tell us about the environmental politics of the Anthropocene.

What should we make of the dramatic appearance of the Leveller leader John Lilburne in Hatfield Level in 1651, at the height of a decade of anti-improvement riots? This unusual contact between central radicalism and rural unrest destabilises binaries between a zealous minority driving civil war conflict and indifferent provincial subjects. Fen projects instead expose the pluralism of political ideas in seventeenth-century England. These crown-led ventures polarised notions of justice and became entangled in the events and debates propelling the English civil wars. In Epworth Manor, commoners across the social spectrum asserted an inalienable ‘just right’ to wetland commons in the face of royal and republican coercion. The strength of customary politics extended far beyond the parish, becoming a powerful means to articulate opposition to improvement in conflicts that moved between wetlands and Westminster. Central governors ultimately struggled to exercise a monopoly over legitimacy or violence in Epworth, where collective action across almost a century repelled efforts to turn their commons into theatres of state power and national productivity.

In the last century, economic sanctions have been used with increasing frequency as a tool of global governance, as well as in foreign policy. At the same time, they have long been criticized for their lack of success in achieving the stated goals of the sanctioners. However, what has received far less attention is the question of whether, and when, it is legitimate to impose sanctions. It has become increasingly clear that the humanitarian impact of sanctions may be devastating, affecting healthcare and food security, as well as harming vulnerable populations such as migrants. Sanctions may interfere with the work of humanitarian aid organizations, create diplomatic problems, and undermine the autonomy of sovereign states. Further, there can be significant legal questions regarding the use of sanctions, whether they are imposed by states or by institutions of global governance.

The questions of accountability, legality, and legitimacy in regard to economic sanctions are remarkably convoluted. While they are distinct concepts, in the context of economic sanctions they are closely intertwined. Accountability can be found in many forms, including judicial venues, institutional oversight, political mechanisms, and public protest. In the case of the UNSC sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, it might be said that the main forms of accountability that came into play were public pressure, as well as political pressure within the UN and outside of it. In the case of “targeted” sanctions, the perception that these measures are genuinely limited in their effects has obscured the fact that they are often indiscriminate and disproportionate, raising questions of legitimacy and legality, while undermining efforts at accountability. With regard to unilateral sanctions imposed by states, there are often significant issues of legality, where these measures do not properly constitute either retorsions or countermeasures. While asset freezes and similar blacklists of individuals (SDNs) appear to address the legal and ethical objections to comprehensive sanctions, there are issues related to the lack of due process, with implications for both the legality and legitimacy of these measures.

We use recent theories of the politics of economic development and of economic interdependence and war to construct an analytic narrative of the events covered in this volume.  We trace the end of China’s hegemony, and the instability that attended it, to the different policies the region’s states chose toward commerce, development, and reform.  States that pursued modernization gained wealth and power relative to those that did not.  These choices had fateful consequences for the regional balance of power and encouraged modernized upstarts to overthrow the traditional order.  A more dynamic order arose as great powers competed to impose a new hegemony or at least a new stability, forming coalitions with the region’s other states and offering new ideologies to legitimize their rule.  While existing theories shed light on the evolution of East Asian order, our consideration also reveals important gaps in explanation that merit further investigation.

This chapter conceptualizes deference as an international court’s acceptance of the state’s exercise of authority. It presents a method for measuring deference that combines case outcomes, interpretation, and remedial orders. The chapter introduces a novel theoretical account of deference. This explanation centers on a court’s strategic space, or the range of possible decisions that will satisfy a court’s legal and political imperatives, and argues that two political factors determine this strategic space: formal independence and political fragmentation. The former concerns the formal rules that safeguard independence while the latter refers to the heterogeneity of states’ preferences. These two constraints affect deference by way of their impact on a court’s legitimacy and the feasibility and credibility of state resistance. The theoretical account also considers the role of persuasive argumentation, public legitimation, and past resistance. This explanation is distinguished from accounts that emphasize judicial support networks and political norms and legal culture.

This chapter summarizes the empirical findings by comparing the three international courts. It shows that the EACJ has been the most deferential of the three courts, followed by the CCJ, and the African Court has been the least deferential. At the same time, the EACJ has the narrowest strategic space, the African Court the broadest and the CCJ lies between. The comparative analysis corroborates the theoretical argument of the book as each court’s deference closely aligns with its degree of formal independence and the extent of political fragmentation among its member states. The chapter revisits the book’s core argument by discussing the scope of the argument and considering its generalizability. It concludes with a discussion of the book’s implications for interdisciplinary research on international courts and IR literature on IOs in contemporary world politics.

Shah Tahmasb (r. 1524–76), the second Safavid ruler, faced the immense challenge of establishing his legitimacy and power in the shadow of his legendary father, Ismail, the founder of the dynasty. The Turkic tribal chiefs of Anatolia, including the Rumlus, Ustajlus, Afshars, Qajars, and Takkalus, were often resistant to subservience, especially to a ruler they perceived as lacking the military might and charismatic authority of Ismail. During the first half of Tahmasb’s reign, this challenge was particularly acute.

To secure his rule and the loyalty of his chiefs, Tahmasb turned to the spiritual concept of ikhlās (purity of intention), a powerful moral code drawn from the Qurʾan and expounded in Sufi ethics. This concept, used to consecrate the bond of loyalty between the chiefs and their Sufi king, made the loyalty morally binding and more difficult to break. In the face of political instability, marked by civil war and a massive Ottoman invasion, the Safavid dynasty’s survival depended on this cultivation of sacred loyalty.

Despite his lack of immediate personal charisma, Tahmasb’s cultivation of consecrated loyalty solidified the chiefs’ allegiance and helped the Safavids endure their most perilous period, preserving both the dynasty’s cohesion and its long-term survival.

This chapter concludes the book with normative messages on contexts where states can trust public cooperation without coercion, addressing jurisprudential and normative aspects of governments gaining public cooperation.