Chapter 6 focusses on the different forms of cross-ideological alliances between Islamist and leftist movements that were made to oppose the authoritarian regime. Far from romanticising those experiences into the clichéd concept of good opponents all coming together to fight the authoritarian regime, the chapter demonstrates instead how building cross-ideological alliances provoked ruptures and crystallised dissension within the constellations of actors themselves. It also shows how specific organisations and actors, mobilised on several scenes, came to play different roles in those alliances. The chapter goes on to demonstrate how each constellation of actors also maintained its own spaces of sociability and its own networks. Long-distance activism entailed other forms of activities that were turned towards group members in order to maintain activist groups despite their members’ new political lives in exile. Both Islamists and leftists worked to preserve their communities and to ensure the continuity of activism, albeit in different ways.

Transnational policy networks (TPNs) participate in global governance by formulating ideas and policy options around and through formal and informal intergovernmental organizations. They illustrate the third type of informal governance introduced in Chapter 1, informal governance that exists in the spaces around these institutions. TPNs are constituted by individuals who share a common expertise, a common technical language, and broadly shared normative concerns, but not a common institutional setting nor agreement on specific policy goals. This chapter contrasts TPNs with other institutional forms in the literature – advocacy networks, epistemic communities, transgovernmental networks, public–private partnerships, multistakeholder initiatives, and transgovernmental initiatives – and argues for their integrative advantages and ability to address individual agency and power. A heuristic case illustrates how a TPN functioned to create the Office of the Ombudsperson at the UN – securing rights protection for individuals targeted for UN sanctions – despite the initial opposition of all five Permanent Members of the Security Council. The chapter concludes with reflections on the potential benefits of applying the concept to other emergent policy domains.

The scarce state’s actions – especially the invention of chieftaincy – have had lasting implications for distributive politics. This chapter connects clientelism to the scarce state’s actions, showing that one particularly large effect of the state on political competition has been through the creation of the community-level brokers that allow parties to engage in clientelism at scale. Clientelism in this hinterland is facilitated most effectively by the chiefs that the state itself created.

Chapter 4 focuses on micro-particularism: distribution of money, goods, or services to individual voters and households in hopes of obtaining their electoral support. The chapter finds this practice is extremely common in Indonesia and the Philippines but is not entirely absent in Malaysia (especially East Malaysia). The micro-particularistic practice given the greatest attention in the literature is cash handouts; the chapter confirms that candidates in the Philippines and Indonesia devote much attention to how to distribute cash effectively. Despite the ubiquity of the term “vote buying,” the chapter finds that micro-particularism rarely involves straightforward market transactions, either in how disbursement is expressed culturally or in anticipated outcomes: these payments are generally not contingent patronage. The chapter reveals that candidates find cash handouts most valuable as a means of signaling that they are serious contenders (a process the chapter calls credibility buying) and protecting their presumed turf; most voters being targeted have, at best, tenuous loyalties to the candidates targeting them.

Over the past two generations a fundamental change has taken place in the scholarly understanding of the commercial world of late imperial China. Lasting from the Song (960–1279) to the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), this millennium of Chinese history had long been judged a period of decline, its initial economic breakthroughs never fulfilling their promise. The commercial and technological innovations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were thought to have given way to economic stagnation and cultural conservatism, as the enterprising peasantry and merchants of south China lost out to the prerogatives of Confucian scholar-officials and their state-sponsored culture in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties. Tested by a highly competitive examination regime and thereafter sheltered by a host of privileges, these scholar-officials acquired and retained an unrivalled hegemony that was cultural, political, and, some would add, economic. When China suffered a severe economic downturn during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the once-admired stability of the Qing regime was criticized for its backwardness, and the late imperial economy of these scholar-officials’ rule was condemned for its stagnation.

Part II looks at the position of fixers within the larger field of journalism. The newsmaking process can be understood as a series of mediations between successive contributors along a chain that stretches from local sources all the way to foreign audiences. “Fixers,” “translators,” “producers,” and others engage in similar journalistic activities along that chain, but news contributors nonetheless draw – and police – important distinctions among these various labels. To rise in status above “translators” and perhaps be recognized as “producers,” fixers try to present themselves as objective professionals and avoid the appearance of local allegiances. Yet local connections are, paradoxically, also their greatest asset for serving client reporters’ needs. Through accounts of reporting on events from the 2014 Soma mine disaster to the Syrian and Afghan refugee crises in Turkey, these chapters illustrate fixers’ ambiguous place in journalism’s hierarchical division and their efforts to claim high-status roles and labels.

The duties that principals and agents owe each other are typically coterminous with the agency relationship itself. But sometimes temporal lines of clean demarcation do less work. The Chapter identifies situations in which an agent may owe duties—including fiduciary duties—to the principal prior to the formal start of their relationship, including any enforceable contract between the parties. Likewise, not all duties that agents and principals owe each other end with the relationship. The Chapter explores the rationales for duties at the temporal peripheries for an agency relationship and the extent to which they are derived from doctrines distinct from agency law. Issues in some contexts are amenable to resolution through bright-line determinations; others require nuanced and fact-specific inquiry.These structural consequences of agency require tempering either the claims to generality or the content of some theoretical accounts of fiduciary relationships more broadly, particularly those stressing the cognitive dimensions of agents’ loyalty and demanding robust commitment from the agent.

Britain was home to international commodity markets in London and Liverpool in the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries. There was a rising volume of international trade as Britain became the first industrial nation, a major importer of these commodities for its own needs, an entrepȏt, and a centre for organising distribution elsewhere. The London and Liverpool markets facilitated distribution through time with forward dealings. Futures contracts went a step further: actual delivery was not contemplated, and trades were settled by paying price differences. The markets and the trade associations whose members worked in them engaged in private law-making - the way that the markets were constituted and governed; the controls over those using them; the system of rules for transactions on them and how these were cleared and settled; the standard form contracts used for dealings; and the arbitration procedures for dispute settlement. State law intervened in only the most egregious cases of market abuse attracting public condemnation and threatening confidence. Until the twentieth century, lawyers were not regularly engaged in formulating the rules and contracts of the London and Liverpool commodity markets or in advising on how disputes were to be settled or arbitrated.

This chapter charts what we know about intermediaries across settings and times in history, to provide a comparative perspective on their being within fields of development that broadly relate to interventions of law, regulation, rule of law, justice, and institutions. It focuses on the concept of the intermediary as an analytical means of identifying the social nodes in transnational networks of relative positions and power. It highlights the role that intermediaries play and the challenges they face, at the interfaces of different knowledge and value systems that appear as the development industry intervenes across the globe. It uses an inductive approach, which was key for locating individuals who played an intermediary role in Myanmar’s rule of law assistance field across several institutional positions: local lawyers; local NGOs; locally employed staff of international organisations; government employees; and international consultants. Despite their different roles and assignments, they all had in common having to perform the delicate task of relating larger, globally oriented ideas to the Myanmar locale, in a key middle position between foreign, national and local actors.

The final chapter summarises the findings on the importance of understanding the role of intermediaries in rule of law assistance. As Myanmar struggled for foreign credibility and investment, the findings are also consistent with the global version – foreign actors’ influence and local dependence in societies where donors become an established but delicate feature of social, political, and economic life that people encounter on a daily basis. In this new landscape, intermediaries become responsible for navigating local and national institutions, values, and people. This book keeps both sides in view while focusing on the intermediaries. It also considers the extent to which the findings could be generalised beyond Myanmar and their practical implications for helping to advance enquiry into the field of rule of law assistance globally.

The growth of economic informality, the transformation of left party-union linkages, and the rise of political decentralization in Latin America have all empowered local “brokers" who are linked to national political parties but also substantially autonomous and often opportunistic. The leaders of left parties in the region – even parties that are externally mobilized or that advance programmatic platforms promoting greater inclusion of popular sectors – have often needed to negotiate with such actors to secure power and implement policies. In this chapter, we consider the resources that intermediaries offer to parties but also the challenges that broker-mediated incorporation poses for left parties. We then use new evidence from Brazil – n particular, from the experience of the externally mobilized, programmatic Workers’ Party (PT) – to show the necessity but also the fragility of alliances with such actors. We assess possible implications of the reliance on brokers for the sustainability of the “inclusionary turn" in Latin America.

Scientists have observed that some animals have been able to adapt to climate change, particularly global warming, and habitat loss by human incursion, whereas other animals have not. For example, some birds have adjusted to warmer temperatures by altering their regular seasonal migration habits so that they fly to different places and at different times than would normally be the case, such as arriving earlier to their traditional winter habitats. Other birds, however, have not been so fortunate. In particular, many types of coastal nesting birds, such as the Eurasian oystercatcher, are at risk for extinction because they have been unable to adjust to the increased frequency of tidal flooding associated with rising sea levels.

Chapter 3 will examine Huizhou merchants’ efforts to penetrate major market sites in the Yangzi Valley and along the Grand Canal. It will introduce the problems they encountered, such as brigandry when traveling and local protectionism when marketing, and then consider various merchant countermeasures. Ranging from secret security arrangements and bribery to new financial instruments and hired protection or clientage, these merchant responses appear not to have involved any serious effort to forge public or political institutions that would protect merchant interests. Quite likely, the diversity of Huizhou merchant interests obstructed any collective effort leading to one policy or solution. While its shippers may have desired government protection, Huizhou pawnbrokers strove to thwart all government intrusion (the first tax specifically on pawnbrokering dates from 1623). As their credit operations became increasingly enmeshed in commercial deals, pawnbrokers’ profits and secrecy aroused greater criticism, as did the activities of Huizhou merchants in general in the later half of the Ming.