Platform governance matters. The failure of platform companies to govern their users has led to disasters ranging from the unwitting culpability of Facebook in the 2017 genocide of the Rohingya people, to the spread of fraud and disinformation exacerbating the COVID-19 crisis, and to the subversion of free and fair elections across the world. The Introduction to The Networked Leviathan frames the problem of platform governance and its similarity to some of the problems confronted for centuries by political states and recommends that policymakers and scholars of the internet turn to older forms of political organization for inspiration.

Returning to the Myanmar government's ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people, this chapter argues: how could Facebook not have known that its platform was being abused to promote genocide? The answer draws on longstanding scholarship across political science, urban studies, economics, and other fields relating to the problems that centralized governors have in drawing together knowledge from the peripheries of their territories. It is argued that the appropriate solution to problems of knowledge in the platform context is to design democratic and polycentric governance institutions permitting ordinary people to have influence over company decisions.

The introduction to the book presents the context, scope, normative framework, core arguments, and the general structure of the book. It identifies gaps in existing literature on statehood and minority rights and explains the way the book addresses those gaps. The introduction especially elaborates the background of case studies and their relevance for the book. My unique approach to the case studies that goes beyond the vulnerability framework and instead focuses on the ways minorities are marginalised through the ideological operation of postcolonial states, is also discussed in this part. To support my analysis throughout the book, I have relied mainly on primary materials and archival sources, whenever possible. The research is also informed by a series of interviews with national and international organisations working in Bangladesh. My analysis is influenced by critical, postcolonial, and TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) scholarship. Although the historical context is South Asia and the specific focus is on colonial India and present-day Bangladesh and Myanmar, many of the arguments, observations, and findings of the book should be equally relevant to other postcolonial states. The normative and pragmatic significance of the book beyond the Rohingya or the CHT crisis lies in this fact.

Chapter 5 explains how the ideology of the postcolonial ‘developmental’ state relies on the language of economic progress and development to undermine the minority question. I offer a critical, in-depth, and multi-layered analysis of the complex interrelationship between minorities, postcolonial states, and dominant international actors with reference to ‘development’ and international law. The analysis is organised under two major rubrics: I first examine the treatment of minorities in the international law of development and then examine how international law discourse on minority and group rights addresses the issue of economic development. In both cases, critically engaging with central themes in the discourse on both ‘development’ and ‘minority rights’ under international law, I argue that international law provides a framework within which international actors and postcolonial states suppress minority interests in the name of economic development and that politically marginalised minorities suffer the most due to such development activities. In this way, international law involvement in the ideological function of the postcolonial ‘developmental’ state not only results in further marginalisation of already vulnerable minorities but also serves to legitimise and gloss over asymmetric power relations that produce such marginalisation. Case studies on the Rohingya and the CHT hill people substantiate my arguments.

Chapter four demonstrates how the post-WWII liberal vision of international law feeds into the ideology of the postcolonial ‘liberal’ state in the form of ‘individualism’, thereby dominating the discourse on minority protection. One direct implication of the dominance of liberal individualism in the postcolonial constitutional architecture of rights is the denial of protection for minority groups. The liberal human rights regime is designed to diffuse cultural groups into individual units, so as to facilitate their assimilation into a homogeneous national (read majoritarian) identity. This chapter explains how international law, with its liberal underpinning, shrinks the scope of the right to self-determination and thereby perpetuates the vulnerability of, or in some cases even leads to the extinction of, minority groups. In this connection, I also highlight the peculiar challenge that postcolonial states face in reconciling the diverging forces of ‘liberal individualism’ and majoritarian ‘ethno-nationalism’. The former emanates from the liberal international legal order, the latter from the nationalist discourse of allegiance, entitlement, and legitimacy. The issue of citizenship and statelessness is also discussed in this context. My arguments in this chapter are supported by in-depth case studies on the Rohingya and the CHT hill people.

Chapter three deals with the role of international law in the ideology of the postcolonial ‘national’ state. With its ambition of achieving a homogeneous and unified sovereign entity, the postcolonial state essentially relies on international law principles for the continuity of colonial boundaries (uti possidetis), territorial integrity, sovereign equality, and non-interference in internal affairs. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the uti possidetis principle helps in the maintenance of peace and order, I argue that uti possidetis is a key problem. Far from being a corrective mechanism halting potential ‘disorder’ emanating from decolonisation, the continuation of arbitrarily drawn colonial boundaries undermines the legitimate right to self-determination of numerous ethnic minorities in postcolonial states and often results in violent ethnic conflicts. The argument for uti possidetis in international law is also normatively inconsistent as it depends upon the capacity of the postcolonial state to efface ethno-nationalism while simultaneously allowing the state to produce its own sustaining nationalist ideology in majoritarian terms. The minority problem is thus embedded in the very ideological making of the postcolonial ‘national’ state in international law. My arguments in this chapter are substantiated with in-depth case studies on the Rohingya and the CHT hill people.

Bangladesh’s elite had been decimated twice within a generation. In 1947 many upper-class, professional and entrepreneurial Hindus had left for India and they had been largely replaced by newcomers from West Pakistan. In 1971 these newcomers retreated to Pakistan amidst targeted killings of the delta’s professionals and intellectuals. As a result, independent Bangladesh started out with only a few people who had any experience in running state institutions or large enterprises. They needed all the help they could get.Suddenly they had to perform on the global stage. As a result, Bangladesh society rapidly developed new transnational links that would shape its future course. Especially influential were foreign aid and investment, mass migration and rapid advances in connectivity.

After decades of military rule, internal conflict, and international sanctions, under a new government in Myanmar there was emerging opportunity to consider how, if at all, to respond to the serious human rights violations of previous decades, and address ongoing violence that persists today, including in Rakhine (involving the Rohingya), Shan and Kachin States, and in the South East of Myanmar. The relative lack of mechanisms for prosecuting international crimes, and government opposition towards International Criminal Court and United Nations investigations, suggest that Myanmar’s leaders have rejected the norm of international criminal justice. Yet this chapter presents a complex story of ongoing contestation. It first reveals the historical engagement with international criminal law in Myanmar. It then analyses the themes different actors raise when they seek to influence international criminal justice in relation to Myanmar, before analysing Myanmar’s laws and institutions for responding to international crimes. It concludes that while Myanmar represents a highly challenging context for encouraging the prosecution of international crimes, there is a dynamic process of engagement with this norm.

Despite the election of a civilian government in Myanmar in 2015 – the first since 1962 – the transition from military rule to human rights-respecting democratic governance remains a major work in progress. This chapter examines the sociopolitical causes of current populist tensions in Myanmar, such as the historical roots of ultra-nationalism and militarization, which extend back to the country’s colonial past. Persistent military offensives against ethnic and religious minorities, most acutely against the Muslim Rohingya population, are supported by a populist culture of intolerance that not only threatens persecuted communities but places the future of democracy in Myanmar at risk. The stoking of violence in the Rohingya crisis is also linked to radical “Buddhist” organizations, including the 969 and MaBaTha (Race and Religion Protection Committee). The chapter closes by examining how the international community and human rights systems can still contribute to developing an inclusive, human-rights-based culture in Myanmar.

The discussions and debate we had around the “Toward a Greater Eurasia: How to Build a Common Future” in the fourth Astana Club Meeting (12–13 November 2018), held while I was working on Systemic Earthquake, contained significant clues with respect to understanding the psychology of the international environment and bringing out the main focus of this book’s methodological approach. The prevailing intellectual currents among participants emerged right from the opening session of this wide-ranging roundtable gathering hosted by the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and attended by a number of former presidents, prime ministers, and ministers together with a host of academics distinguished for their work on the issue of international order.