The last chapter that focuses on individual decisions, discusses activism in rallies and protests as a national conversation over Russia’s future. The first section of the chapter demonstrates that the protest actions in Moscow framed this conversation and provided a focal point for increased participation. The findings support information cascade theories of mobilization in the protest movement but not in the rallies, where increased participation continued to rely on regime incentives. The second section of the chapter focuses on the competing frames that the opposition and regime developed to characterize the national conversation. Relying on the data, the final section focuses on frame resonance, exploring the effectiveness of state and opposition framing in shaping protesters attitudes.

This short final chapter summarises the main arguments of the book with a particular emphasis on the law’s indeterminacy and its relation to structural bias. The author argues that apart from evidencing the law’s total openness, the constant oscillation of ‘civilisation’ between ‘improvement’ and ‘biology’ in fact evidences its links to the contradictions of global capitalism. As a consequence, the structured indeterminacy of ‘civilisation’ can be useful to actors who accept the basic desirability of capitalism, but it can be profoundly damaging to radical projects.

This chapter lays the foundation for the study of the role of elections in non-democratic regimes. Using VDem data, the analysis in the chapter shows that while stability is the most common response to electoral autocracies, elections can produce change in a liberalizing or autocratizing direction. This introductory chapter describes this process of voter mobilization in Russia in 2011–2012 and in terms of the existing literature on autocratic stability. It creates the foundational framework for the empirical study that brings together important studies of autocratic elections, hybrid regime stability, and post-election protest. This foundation supports the central argument of the book: when controlled elections reveal information about the lack of regime accountability, voters protest at the ballot box and on the streets. Societal mobilization provides opportunities for opposition growth and forces regimes to respond to maintain stability. The final section of the chapter outlines the plan of the book and summarizes the arguments in each chapter.

Chapter 3 begins with a cross-national statistical test of the implication of the formal model. Designed to show the external validity of the model, the analysis explores the effect of different opposition and regime strategies on the likelihood of post-election protest. To illustrate that the information value of these signals varies according to the nature of the information environment, I analyze the outcomes in two types of non-democracy electoral regimes: electoral autocracies and closed autocracies. The results show that regime and opposition strategies do influence the potential for protest and that these effects vary according to the context in which elections are held. Given this finding, the second half of the book focuses on regime efforts to change that environment in the inter-election period, highlighting the propensity to manipulate the factors that alter popular perceptions about the regime its opposition, and the nature of state–society relations.

Chapter 5 explores social response to the 2011 parliamentary election. These chapters are central to my explanation that links regime change to citizens’ action through opposition and regime strategies in elections. Based on unique original data supplemented with national surveys, this analysis provides the first systematic investigations of individual responses to the information revealed through electoral contests and the opposition call to protest. A crucial innovative feature of each of the chapters is that it considers the behavior of three groups: protesters, regime rally participants or ralliers, and nonparticipants. The first section of the chapter discusses opposition contestation over the vote protest concept and the most efficacious strategy to express dissent at the ballot box. The second section of the chapter explores the individual decision to engage in different protest strategies, showing that while vote protest did undermine regime support, the lack of opposition agreement on one strategy, obscured this information. Nonetheless, the vote protest laid the groundwork for post-election protest by raising awareness and engaging individuals in the process.

Chapter 8 returns to state and opposition contestation between national election cycles. It describes how the regime uses the advantages described in the formal model in Chapter 3 to respond to different electoral contexts, sometimes allowing the opposition to compete and banning them in other cases. In response, the opposition continues to innovate its strategies to generate new information about regime manipulation and the lack of electoral accountability. This process creates a perpetual campaign as the regime and opposition clash over elections at every level of the political system and between elections to shape information environments. The regime is forced to be nimble as it seeks to limit the diffusion of successful opposition strategies and avoid having to reveal new information in national elections. The focus on the Russian case describes regime success in 2016 and 2018 when it engineered victories without provoking protest. It also demonstrates that these efforts moved the regime incrementally in an autocratic direction, generating new political tensions and opposition opportunities. Victory did not end the potential for a breakthrough in the next election.

The purpose of this book is straightforward: to remedy this lacuna by providing an introduction to the international relations of Asia looked at over a longue duree: from the seventh century through 1900, when contact with the West finally destroyed the old order. We seek to offer an accessible overview of the evolution of the East Asian international system through what might be called the “early Westphalian” history of the region, which we date to the nineteenth century. The broader purpose is not just didactic. Rather, we also want to force a consideration of the implications of these cases for international relations theory. Long understudied by mainstream international relations scholars, the East Asian historical experience provides an enormous wealth of new and different cases which promise to enrich a theoretical literature largely derived from the Western experience.

After the Ming dynasty prohibited private overseas trade in 1374, China’s once-flourishing maritime commerce languished until the 1520s, when a boom in Japanese silver mining impelled Chinese mariners to flock to Japan for the monetary metal in high demand in China. Dubbed “Japanese pirates” (Wokou) by the Ming government, these Chinese entrepreneurs developed multinational merchant coalitions and trade networks (including Japanese and Portuguese traders) across the East/Southeast Asian maritime world. The Wokou also became crucial allies of the daimyo of western Japan, embroiled in civil wars and eager to obtain both trade revenue and Portuguese gunpowder weapons. Ming military campaigns in 1548–1557 eliminated many Wokou leaders, but the smuggling trade proved intractable and the Ming lifted its maritime ban in 1567. The Wokou era also witnessed – albeit temporarily – the emergence of the “port polity” as an alternative to the Chinese imperial model of political economy within East Asia.

This chapter analyses the environmental case practice of ad hoc inter-state tribunals and arbitral panels established under the aegis of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Judicial techniques to reflect on the scientific profile of cases are analysed in light of the Bering Sea Fur Seals, Trail Smelter, Lake Lanoux, MOX Plant, MOX Plant OSPAR, Iron Rhine, Southern Bluefin Tuna, Kishenganga, and South China Sea Arbitrations. The chapter examines how adjudicators frame the legally relevant aspects of science-intensive disputes, and the varied avenues tribunals utilize for gathering expert advice. It discusses the significance of appointing independent experts. The chapter also examines the science-based causal inquiries and causal tests from the practice of arbitral tribunals.

The formal model presented in the chapter underscores that control over ballot access conveys a significant power advantage to autocratic incumbents. This control leaves electoral oppositions with few options. Yet, even with this power asymmetry, the model demonstrates that elections force autocrats to make strategic choices that reveal information about regime strengths and weaknesses. Banning strong opponents signals regime weakness. Committing fraud to secure victories signals that elections are not mechanisms of accountability. When opposition parties amplify this information, they can generate focal points to foster societal coordination, forcing the regime to respond with concessions or retribution. Depending on the size and structure of the mobilization, these changes can be sudden or incremental, generating uncertainty that has to be addressed in the inter-election period. Through this process, tightly controlled elections contested by weakly organized opposition parties can prompt regime shifts in a liberalizing or autocratic direction. The first part of the chapter presents the model discursively, and the second part formalizes the argument.

This chapter analyses the colonial branch of the League of Nations, the Mandate System, and its pivotal role in the transmission and reconfiguration of ‘civilisation’ between the two world wars. Focusing on the workings of the Permanent Mandates Commission, it documents how ‘civilisation’ developed a rich institutional life and became an important argumentative tool for those both supporting and opposing the emancipation of Iraq from the British Mandate. Emphasising both transformation and continuity, this chapter examines the administrative and bureaucratic turn of the ‘standard of civilisation’ and the ways it became entangled with practices of counting, reporting and standard-setting. Furthermore, the rise of a basic level of welfarism as a marker of the ‘civilised state’ indicates that the ‘logic of improvement’ is not static, but it evolves in response to the changing imperatives and ideals of the capitalist state. The case of Iraq shows that even though international law does not determine imperial interests or major political evolutions, it does nonetheless provide a vocabulary to articulate and contest them.