The linchpin of colonial administration under regulatory imperialism was the royal governor. The crown relied on royal governors to control the colony’s political agenda, especially on fiscal matters. Yet, in most colonies, assemblies managed to invert this plan and claim almost complete fiscal power for themselves – one of the most important developments under imperial administration in the New World. To explain this, the present chapter develops a strategic logic of bargaining between assemblies and governors and the accountability of governors to the crown. The logic shows how governors were able to make major political concessions to assemblies, yet evade accountability to the crown for them. As a result, regulatory imperialism was unable to restrain the independence of colonial legislatures.

A key component of regulatory imperialism was controlling the colonial government. While the crown accepted colonial assemblies as independent bodies, it attempted to regulate the laws they passed. In particular, imperial officials in London asserted the power to review all colonial legislation and declare acts void if they violated English law or imperial policy. This chapter examines royal legislative review from a strategic perspective as an auditing system. It shows that legislative review worked in part by inducing royal governors to exercise stricter scrutiny over colonial legislation before it ever reached London. At the same time, the analysis shows that legislative review was inherently imperfect. The cost of review to imperial officials ensured that colonial assemblies could pass laws that imperial officials opposed. As a result, legislative review was unable to eliminate the autonomy of colonial assemblies.

Chapter 5 traces the relationship between participatory technologies and information management in Russia. It argues that the Direct Line acts as a barometer of public opinion, a forum through which authorities can disseminate information to the public, and a tool to monitor and selectively punish officials. Moreover, this chapter explains how participatory technologies help authorities create the impression of effective governance and act as a means of public image making.

Chapter 2 builds a comprehensive framework explaining how nondemocracies use participatory technologies to shore up their regimes. The chapter argues that participatory technologies act as a means of information gathering and dissemination and mitigate principal–agent problems. Moreover, the chapter details how participatory technologies can strengthen legitimacy – and who is most likely to buy into them.

In Chapter 5, we reflect on the ethical challenges of irregular warfare. In special operations doctrine, irregular warfare most often involves working ’through, with or by’ foreign guerrillas (unconventional warfare) or foreign counter-guerrilla forces (foreign internal defence). Engaging in armed conflict through proxies can seem like a cheap and low-risk option to policy-makers, but it also contains the potential for conflicts of interest and priorities inherent in all principal–agent relationships. If a powerful state (the principal) feels it has achieved its war aims, can it simply withdraw from a fight in which their proxies (the agent) and their SOF partners are still engaged? Likewise, proxies have incentives to mislead sponsor states as to their capabilities, intentions, and commitment to ethical warfighting. To what extent are SOF morally accountable for the ethical conduct of the foreign combatants whom they advise?

Previous chapters noted that a key source of hazard when profit-maximizing actors are involved in private services is the presence of social service attributes that are difficult to contract for. This chapter relaxes this assumption by examining a novel trend of measuring and contracting for social service attributes via outcome-based incentive contracts (such as social impact bonds). The chapter explores alternative contracting arrangements and outlines the perils of outcome-based contracting when outcomes are poorly measured, examining potential failures of measurement and potential remedies. The chapter also discusses the possibility of using outcome-based contracts as coordination devices alongside their more familiar objective of incentivizing superior service performance.

The introduction proposes environmental health challenges as an obstacle to China’s global leadership. Following a discussion of the unique features of environmental health problems in China, it explains why social response to the crisis is embedded in a political milieu dramatically different from the Mao era. It also touches upon issues of state response, including the challenges of policy implementation. Furthermore, it explains why the discussion fits squarely within the debate over Chinese state’s capacity to revamp itself and the prospect for China’s global leadership. It ends with a discussion of the analytical framework and organization of the book.