This chapter explores the moral and psychological dimensions of the neo-Roman concept of freedom, dimensions that have often been overlooked in favour of a political (and, still more narrowly, republican) analysis of non-domination. Through the example of Montaigne, the late sixteenth-century moral essayist, I argue that neo-Roman freedom is neither exclusively nor intrinsically republican in orientation, that it is best understood as a claim about the status of persons, and that this approach provides a firmer basis for establishing its distinctiveness and value than those accounts, including Quentin Skinner’s, which cast it as a robust variant of non-interference.

This chapter is largely devoted to commenting on the other contributions to the volume.An attempt is made to evaluate the arguments and criticisms brought to bear by each contributor on the project of defining civil liberty not as absence of interference but rather in neo-Roman terms as absence of more general conditions of subjection and dependence. The chapter opens with an exposition of the neo-Roman theory, focusing on its articulation in Roman and common law traditions of thinking about the law of persons and related arguments about ‘fundamental’ rights and liberties. The chapter next defends the distinctiveness and coherence of the neo Roman approach against a number of objection that have been raised against it. The chapter ends by reflecting on how the re-appropriation and development of a neo-Roman perspective might help us to think more fruitfully about some current threats to privacy and democracy as well as individual liberty. This concluding section focuses particularly on threats stemming from increasing surveillance and other silent exercises of power.

This chapter analyses the main circumstances in which a cyber operation may constitute an internationally wrongful act. The first observation made, which is developed in the first section, is that there is no general prohibition of cyber operations in international law. Cyber operations between States are not per se prohibited by international law and generally constitute unfriendly or hostile acts. Despite the absence of a general prohibition on cyber operations, the carrying out of a cyber operation may lead to a violation of specific norms of international law. This chapter focuses on the primary norms of international law that can be breached by state-sponsored cyber operations, namely State sovereignty, non-intervention and human rights.

Pan-Americanism’s promotion of liberal internationalism and pan-Africanism’s appeals to transnational solidarity among African people(s) provided useful frames for critics of non-interference to make it the subject of debate. I argue that the content and political salience of pan-Americanism & pan-Africanism empowered – or even inspired – critics of non-interference in these regions. In this chapter I offer a long-term account of the (uneven) erosion of non-interference at the regional level in the global South, an account centering on the contestedness of this norm within the OAS and OAU compared to ASEAN during the Cold War period. This contestation (at the level of discourse) contributed over time to norm erosion (at the level of law and practice). Pan-Asianism did not serve the same function. Since non-interference was less contested in Southeast Asia (and not on these grounds), it was therefore more robust or resilient over time. Because of the history of norm contestation and erosion, the three regional groupings arrived at the 1980s with different normative priors. This meant that Latin America and Africa were more amenable to the intrusive regionalism trend than was Southeast Asia.

Because of variation in the discursive foundations of regionalism and in the degree and nature of norm contestation and erosion, Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia arrived at the end of the Cold War with different normative priors. These normative priors interacted with other key variables during the second wave of regionalism, one of which is regime type. Democratization in Latin America during the 1980s was extensive, and, by the end of this decade, the region boasted a high “density” of democracy. The achievement of this critical mass of democracies contributed to the renewal of the development of intrusive regionalism (especially aimed at democracy promotion) in the region. Neither Africa nor Southeast Asia has achieved this density. Although average democracy scores in these other regions have been on the rise in the last twenty years, they remain in the “anocracy” range. Even though high democratic density was not achieved in these two regions, though, individual states democratized, and emerging democracies with regional leadership aspirations, like South Africa and Indonesia, have been at the forefront of regional reform campaigns.

This conclusion both briefly revisits the causal arguments that make up the book’s general(izable) framework and highlights the role of idiosyncrasy, contingency, and agency in the divergent normative trajectories of regional societies of Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It then considers the applicability of the book’s theory to a new case – the “Arab” region (defined by membership in the League of Arab States).The last section of the chapter discusses the status of sovereignty in the South today; challenges for intrusive regionalism moving forward; and the normative implications of non-interference and its institutionalized violations.

This chapter addresses a puzzle set up in Chapter 5: Why did Africa become so much more intrusive than Southeast Asia in the post–Cold War period, given that neither region experienced widespread democratization? A partial explanation for this variation in outcomes is that Africa’s normative priors were different – by the time these regions arrived at the 1980s, the norm of non-interference had already eroded to a greater extent in Africa than Southeast Asia. In this chapter, I make the case for another more proximate factor – economic performance. Poor economic performance renders states materially and socially vulnerable and creates legitimacy deficits, and these vulnerabilities make states more open to normative and institutional reform. In Africa, reform took the form of more intrusive regional norms and institutions. Southeast Asia’s stellar economic performance prior to the 1997 financial crisis served to reaffirm and reinforce its norm set – including non-interference. The crisis prompted some reform (and some erosion of non-interference) but not to the same degree as in Africa.