Chapter 6 focuses on the political structure of a rational state. In the Philosophy of Right, by handing the bulk of the state’s political power to unelected agents, Hegel is in effect compromising the reconciliation of particular and collective interests he regards as essential to a rational political order. However, his wariness of democracy is more than a mere relapse into some pre-modern, reactionary standpoint. This chapter argues that Hegel is right to denounce the atomism favoured by mass electoral systems, which tend to reduce the citizens’ political identity to that of individual voters, but that he is wrong to dismiss mass democracy altogether. His critique is overly severe because his conception of democracy presupposes the liberal logic of civil society, which he attempts to sublate in a strictly political manner. As this chapter seeks to show, the atomism he argues against is best avoided not by limiting democracy, but by extending it to the economic sphere. In a democracy that is both political and economic, individuals are no longer mere atoms, but part of collective social units organized around commonly held goals.

Little attention has been paid to competitive dynamics from a political perspective, despite numerous instances of political competition across cultures and systems. In liberal democratic societies, political competition is legalized, allowing citizens to elect leaders who represent their ideas. Conversely, in totalitarian societies, citizens lack voting rights, and political authority is not challenged through democratic means. However, political competitions still occur among ruling elites, often through purges to seize power. This chapter explores political competition, particularly in totalitarian regimes, where purges eliminate rivals among ruling elites. The collapse of such regimes has marked an evolution toward freedom and equal opportunities for all individuals, regardless of background, which aligns with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Highlighting the lack of research on political competitions from an evolutionary psychology perspective, this chapter underscores the need for future research on human emotions and competitive behaviors in the political arena.

Impartiality as a property of government is central to many of the major constitutional concerns of liberal democracy. This essay tersely considers the nature and implications of impartiality in three main areas: the rule of law; the distinction between the right and the good; and freedom of speech. Because of constraints of space, each of the discussions in this paper is no more than a sketch of the complex matters that are at issue in debates over impartiality.

This chapter explores the various ways that liberal internationalism has sought to use international institutions to build cooperative systems of order. I start by outlining liberal internationalism’s tradition of thinking about institutions and peaceful change. Liberalism and liberal internationalism are defined by their deep assumptions about modernity, development, and progress as well as by their focus on the challenges of adapting liberal democracy and international order to modernization and rising interdependence. After this, I turn to five system-structural “problems” that liberal internationalism has grappled with over the past two centuries. These are the problems of anarchy, hierarchy, interdependence, liberal openness, and geopolitical vulnerability. Across millennia, the two dominant forms of international order have been either anarchy or hierarchy. Liberal internationalism has been deeply entangled with both types of order. Yet, despite this, its overall ideas and projects have been oriented toward creating a “third way” between anarchy and hierarchy. In all these pursuits, liberals have used institutions as tools and ordering arrangements to solve problems and promote peaceful change.

In this book, I examined how public authorities’ reliance on algorithmic regulation can affect the rule of law and erode its protective role. I conceptualised this threat as algorithmic rule by law and evaluated the EU legal framework’s safeguards to counter it. In this chapter, I summarise my findings, conclude that this threat is insufficiently addressed (Section 6.1) and provide a number of recommendations (Section 6.2). Finally, I offer some closing remarks (Section 6.3). Algorithmic regulation promises simplicity and a route to avoid the complex tensions of legal rules that are continuously open to multiple interpretations. Yet the same promise also threatens liberal democracy today, as illiberal and authoritarian tendencies seek to eliminate plurality in favour of simplicity. The threat of algorithmic rule by law is hence the same that also threatens liberal democracy: the elimination of normative tensions by essentialising a single view. The antidote is hence to accept not only the normative tensions that are inherent in law but also the tensions inherent in a pluralistic society. We should not essentialise the law’s interpretation, but embrace its normative complexity.

Recent years have witnessed the rise of a range of authoritarian populist, illiberal, far-right, nativist, and extremist parties. We have seen democratic structures threatened or incrementally dismantled through the subversion of an established democratic party by an outsider or ascendance of the extremist wing of a right-wing party. Parties and party leaders occupying an ill-defined space on the political spectrum today generally present a much greater threat to democratic governance than overtly antidemocratic fringe outfits. The ambiguity of such parties, their growing size, their entry into government, the subversion of “good” democratic parties by a “bad” leadership, and the rise of the “shadow party” mean that contemporary political party threats seriously frustrate the possibility of remedial action afforded by existing public law and policy mechanisms. They also require us to reflect anew on crafting novel remedies and to revisit our assumptions about parties as creatures of central constitutional importance.

To explain countries’ varying participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, this chapter begins with a discussion of recipient country characteristics that impact the demand for Chinese spending, including the political regime, clientelism, and the public-private orientation of the corporate sector. It then discusses the supply-side factors that influence Chinese foreign spending, including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), state-owned entities (e.g., SOEs), and private firms. Finally, it evaluates the compatibility of these demand and supply characteristics. The key prediction is that electoral autocracies will display the strongest compatibility with Chinese foreign construction spending. This is amplified when the leaders of these regimes have a weak or insecure hold on power. Electoral autocracies are also predicted to be the most avid adopters of Chinese standards stemming from their eagerness for Chinese infrastructure spending.

This chapter establishes the empirical facts regarding political regimes and the prevalence of clientelism and the public-private orientation of the corporate sector. It begins by showing that electoral autocracies constitute around half of all developing countries during the 2010s, the most of any regime type. They are especially prevalent in Africa and Asia. The theory posits that clientelism plays an important role in driving Chinese foreign infrastructure spending. Several widely used proxies for clientelism establish that it is most prevalent in electoral autocracies. The theory also posits state control of the corporate sector is important to attracting Chinese foreign spending. A variety of measures are used to establish that state ownership of the corporate sector is significantly higher in autocracies than in democracies, especially in industries related to infrastructure. Overall, this chapter provides robust evidence about the characteristics of political regimes posited to influence Chinese infrastructure spending.

The end of the twentieth century was once seen as the ultimate triumph of liberal, constitutional democracy, as new waves of democratization swept the world and as nation-states pursued bold plans of economic and institutional integration. By the third decade of the twenty-first century, however, constitutional democracies, liberal values, and global economic integration were under threat from a rising tide of populist authoritarianism. The distance between these two moments is not so great. In fact, their seemingly divergent moods and tendencies are best understood as distinct manifestations of common tensions that are fundamental to the idea of a sovereign and self-governing people. This introductory chapter argues that the resonance and endurance of popular sovereignty rest on its ambivalences and tensions, its contested status, and even its inherently fictional character. It demonstrates the value of revitalizing the study of popular sovereignty, conceived not as an ideological conviction or a rhetorical device but as a field of enduring questions through which seemingly disparate political phenomena can be understood.

Faced with the challenge of accommodating diversity, liberal justice and human rights promise to provide an adequate normative framework for securing equal liberties and rights for all. However, despite great advancements in theory and law, discrimination endures, and these promises have not been fulfilled for enduring minorities, especially in places of ethno-national conflict. The problem this chapter aims to highlight is that while liberal democracy and human rights frameworks provide us with a desirable ideal, they fail to provide useful guidance for progress, from a situation of ethno-national conflict – which often involves political exclusion, sharp inequalities, low mutual trust, and high animosity – to more just and peaceful societies that respect the human rights of all. Self-determination is currently blocked as a legal remedy; states are reluctant to grant minority rights, especially in cases where majority–minority relations are in conflict; and scholars of equality law, asserting that any real advancement is blocked because of the individualist orientation of the law, send us back to collective measures.

This chapter examines the policy issues that influence the shape and contours of the TV GVC. As with any trading system, the global TV industry is based on a set of social and political values that are predominantly those of open societies and market economies. These values are not universal and the nature and amount of participation of a country into the TV GVC depends on its elites’ degree of adherence to such values. Thus, the first section devotes special attention to China, which has largely shut its doors to the global TV industry. The second section examines the policy alternatives that exist for those countries that wish to embark on the path of GVC participation and economic upgrading. The chapter argues that such a policy has three key prongs: it must take into account the globalised nature of the TV industry and support firms that are best positioned to perform in the global marketplace, harness the benefits of trade, and incentivise creativity through regulation.

Chapter 17 ends with an exploration of the generalisability of this book’s findings, their limitations and potential for new research. It also returns to a fundamental challenge that right-wing populists’ religiously laden identity politics poses for Western societies. Namely, that instead of being just the latest iteration of religious opposition to secularisation, these developments point to a question of post-religious politics itself: what can still unite us in a society in which sources of social connectedness such as class, shared understandings of history, national culture and religion have lost most of their universal appeal and in which parts of the population are left in a profound crisis of identity? Who are ‘we’? Who is the ‘other’? As these questions drive a split between cosmopolitans and communitarians, right-wing populists have recognised a gap of representation and offered their own remedy: an ethno-cultural identity politics based on sweeping ideas of Western civilisation, in the context of which Christianity has become a secularised idea of ‘Christendom’ dissociated from Christian values, beliefs and institutions. Yet, faith leaders and mainstream parties also still have a tremendous influence over which role religion will play in liberal democracies. While the godless crusade may be well under way, its destination and success are yet to be determined.