If a firm is a nexus of contracts, then it is just the sum of its counterparties. It follows that when a firm monopolizes a particular market and exploits its power to impose unfavourable terms on a counterparty, the firm necessarily exploits one counterparty for the benefit of another, because the additional profits the firm generates from the unfavourable terms must be paid out eventually to some other counterparty of the firm. One alternative to attacking monopoly power through breakup of large firms or limits on anticompetitive conduct in the marketplace is therefore to prevent any one counterparty of the firm from so dominating firm governance as to be able to induce the firm to oppress other counterparties for its benefit. Creating a balance of power in firm governance, by giving each class of counterparties (i.e., workers, suppliers, investors, and consumers) an equal say over the choice of board members, would eliminate the internal forces that induce firms to exercise monopoly power. But it would not prevent firms from engaging in productive, pie-expanding, behaviour, because such behaviour tends to expand the business that the firm does with all of its counterparties—or at least enables the firm to use a share of the gains to compensate those counterparties that lose out—and therefore benefits them all.

While the policy preferences of the masses are purely expressive, the political elite actually make public policy, so the preferences they act on do have instrumental effects. If the masses adopt the policy preferences of the elite, that points to the question of what public policies the elite advocate to the masses. In the same way that economists simplify the motivations of firms to say that firms are profit maximizers, the political elite are power maximizers. That motivation starts with the recognition that politics is adversarial. In elections, some people win while others lose. The same is true in public policy issues. Some win while others lose. The motivation of the political elite is to keep the power they have, and to gain more. In most societies, the political elite is not a monolithic entity. Rather, there are competing members of the elite, with competing public policy ideas. Thus, the masses have a choice of anchors, but once they choose an anchor, most of their policy preferences are derivative of their anchors.

Modern democracies involve structures for collective choice that periodically empower relatively few people to steer the social direction for everybody. As in all forms of governance, technology shapes how this unfolds. Political theorists have typically treated democracy as an ideal or an institutional framework, instead of considering its materiality, the manner in which democratic possibilities are to some extent shaped by the objects needed to implement them. Specialized AI changes the materiality of democracy, not just in the sense that independently given actors now deploy different tools. AI changes how collective decision-making unfolds and what its human participants are like. This chapter reflects on the past, present, and future of democracy and embeds into these basic reflections an exploration of the challenges and promises of AI for democracy in this digital century. We explore specifically how to design AI to harness the public sphere, political power, and economic power for democratic purposes. Thereby, this chapter also continues the discussion from Chapter 2 by developing how technology is political in the foundational sense. This chapter also investigates current questions about how AI could threaten or enrich the democratic processes of the present.

This chapter focuses on the international extension of modern intellectual property, highlighting America's place in a regime of intellectual property that today is global. We trace the foundations for this global regime in international treaty frameworks, focusing on the legal parallels between treaties and contracts, as instruments of legal power. We briefly sketch the twentieth century developments of intellectual property law in the U.S., highlighting the juristic "solicitude" that is shown to intellectual property in U.S. lawmaking and international diplomacy. In the wake of World War II, the U.S. has used its position of global economic power to solidify commitments to intellectual property in a legal framework for trade relations that constitutes a super-national organization, the World Trade Organization, one that has facilitated global convergence in intellectual property law. New dangers and challenges are facing us today, in this globalized legal order, with the rise of artificial intelligence, and with patent claims extending very deeply into the social dimensions of human life, through computer-implemented inventions.

This chapter establishes a basis for the book's meta-narrative in a present-day context, highlighting the importance of intellectual property - particularly patents - for the foundation of Facebook. The chapter emphasizes the weaving together of formality and substantive rationality in contemporary patents, which are theorized as instruments of legal power. By showing how patents were important in the founding of Facebook, the chapter emphasizes the role that instruments of legal power - like patents - can play in linking people together into social groups, classes, and networks. Michael Mann's IEMP model for social power helps us to understand the dynamics of exclusivity, as seen in contemporary intellectual property, particularly in patents.

In Chapter 13, we examine the notion that population is important for national power, an idea widely recognized among scholars but rarely explored empirically. We begin by laying out a theoretical rationale, highlighting the notion that enhanced numbers of people should bring greater returns. Specifically, we emphasize that people provide economic resources, human capital, and innovation. Together, the greater capital, human capital, and innovation that a large population affords allows a society to produce more, which should promote greater self-sufficiency. In the analytical sections, we explore these hypotheses systematically across economic, military, and cultural dimensions of power. We find that size is associated with higher GDP, greater iron and steel production, and lower import and aid dependence. In addition, more populous countries tend to have more military personnel, higher military expenditures, and greater naval tonnage. Finally, larger countries have a greater number of universities, more patent applications, and more tourists. Our empirical analyses, coupled with analyses conducted by other scholars, thus place the thesis that size brings power beyond much doubt.

The German patent system launched in 1877 has usually been treated merely as a later variant of the Anglo-American system. Yet the German system was novel in allowing both State and judiciary unprecedented discretion to constrain the rights claims of inventors, with prolonged debates on the abstract principles that should guide the legal frameworks of patenting practice. Moreover, due to the economic power of Germany in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, neighboring nations tended to follow its patent model to a significant extent. The success of the Germanic system in its variant forms thus a significant factor in the rapid subsequent development of patent systems in Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe. As German patent theorists continued to debate the statutory rationales for patents as a species of intellectual property for half a century, the variety of ideological interpretations to which the German system was susceptible was another reason why other nation-states drew upon it in developing their own distinctive forms of patent legislation.