In this chapter, I discuss in what sense and to what extent institutions have political authority. I take institutions with legitimate authority to be justified in wielding political power, where this political power is backed by the threat of coercion. Against the position that international institutions are not coercive, I claim that applying an adequate conception of coercion – which takes the concept of enforcement as paradigmatic for coercion, rather than the concept of pressure – enables us to understand some international institutions as coercive. It also lays open the assumption that a single conception of authority applied to all international institutions misconceives the diversity in aims and purposes of international institutions. Institutions that coordinate morally mandatory aims and institutions that coordinate mutual advantage can both be plausibly understood as coercive, even though their authority differs in scope and in what standards they must satisfy. Finally, I discuss whether the standard of state consent is appropriate for international institutions: while it is plausible for institutions that coordinate mutual advantage, it is implausible as a standard of legitimacy for institutions that coordinate morally mandatory aims – such as institutions of international criminal justice.

Chapter 1 is the first of three chapters that introduce the book. It presents the main concepts used and makes the case for a political economy approach to studying education – one that combines economics of education with political theory. The chapter argues that typical economics of education analyses provide powerful tools to study education, but have analytical shortcomings – they generally assume that markets are competitve, that all economic actors are politically equal, and that, given similar information, they would make similar economic choices, no matter their position in the social structure. The chapter suggests that a political economy approach provides a deeper discussion of market imperfections and economic/political power – including how power relations influence individual choice and condition the identification and treatment of market imperfections – to more fully understand education as an institution and its role in society. The chapter ends by providing three examples of important policy issues in education that such an approach would be likely to address: the relationship between education and economic growth; gender discrimination in labor markets; and teacher shortages.

A short conclusion ties major findings of Bankrolling Empire to wider understandings of early modern political economy in India, and to the comparative history of such transitions world-wide in that crucial period. Scholars such as Braudel, Wallerstein, Mann, and Goldstone have done major work on this period, and the story of the Mughal Empire, the Jhaveri family, and new political upstarts offered in this book helps to fill important gaps on the world scene. By focusing on how four generations of a single business family interacted with sources of political authority in South Asia, we learn how a major imperial formation atrophied, and the mechanisms by which various smaller successor states relied on finance to emerge in its wake. This work suggests that business leaders like the Jhaveris were not complacent, but maintained a keen eye towards political developments of the day. When opportunities arose, they relied on their expertise and wealth to shape political power. In the twenty-first century, as relationships between private capital and political authority continue to be intertwined, this work reminds us that while politics certainly impacts business, commercial actors often possess greater resources that can reorient the very contours of state power and its capacity to govern.

The foundations of the separation of powers principle and those of antitrust present an actual and renewed interest, as we are currently witnessing a resurgence of non-economic concerns in the antitrust literature. This observation especially relates to the United States, but many issues raised in this country are also relevant in other jurisdictions. Several key provisions of antitrust national laws or European treaties are rather vague, leaving broad room for interpretation, and have remained unchanged in substance for decades, which may open a connection between the political content of antitrust viewed historically and prospectively; to a certain extent, the ball is now in the court of agencies and courts. The concentration of power in the digital era constitutes the starting point of the analysis, which continues with the observation that some digital platforms have significant political power and ends with the idea that such platforms have become important or even fundamental parts of the digital infrastructure of democracy.

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 argues that democratic developing countries were more likely to open their economies during the late-twentieth century if they violated workers' basic rights to organize and strike. The more democracies adopted such labor repression, the more likely they were to embrace free trade. The more democracies respected workers' rights, in contrast, the more likely they were to maintain high tariffs.

Payne offers an account of the unsettling effects of confessions of violence by armed left guerillas or revolutionary fighters in Argentina in two moments in Argentine history. The chapter considers how the timing of these confessions shaped responses to them. In the years shortly after the transition from authoritarian rule, contentious debate moved toward a full accounting on the left for its role in past violence. In recent years, this proved less possible. As the right reconsolidated its political power, the confessional narratives from the Argentine armed left fueled fears of a backlash against the left, reinforcing a view of the left’s shared responsibility with the authoritarian regime for human rights violations, and a call for its prosecution. This silencing of open debate over the left’s past actions prevented the process of condemning violations regardless of who committed them. The prescriptive dimension to this observation highlights the need for urgency in thinking self-critically, to reflect broadly on the motives and consequences of violence, and to use moments of political advantage to condemn those parts of the (temporarily) dominant power’s past that deserve condemnation.

Why do companies perceive a need to influence politics? What is political influence? How can companies obtain political influence? In this chapter, I answer all of those questions, drawing on research in several fields and on interviews with lobbyists, politicians, and others with first-hand experience with political influence. I explain that political influence is fundamentally about building and maintaining relationships with people in power. I argue that problem-solving is one way companies can form relationships, and I discuss common problems elected officials face: the need for money, the need for information, and the need to do their jobs well (or to be perceived as such). I conclude this chapter by discussing which influence-seeking strategies this implies, other than the strategies commonly studied, and discuss how this lends itself to questioning why companies choose different strategies.

In the concluding chapter, I focus on synthesizing the findings from the book and addressing some lingering normative questions. Specifically, I ask what this means for boycotts, whether forcing political activity underground is really preferable to having it more out in the open, and what this means for if and how corporate influence can be tamed.

The introduction to this book surveys what we already know about political influence and explains why companies are and are not exactly like other organized political interests that try to influence politics. Companies differ from other organized interests in that they do not exist primarily to further policy objectives, and instead pursue policy objectives as a means to improving their business climate. Companies exist to sell things. This provides insights into how they go about seeking political influence because their audience is a group of people that may not agree with them politically. This chapter also discusses where political influence happens (i.e., anywhere there are governments) and provides an overview of the book.

In this chapter, I explain how fear of a public backlash shapes how companies engage in the political system. I outline a probabilistic chain of events that can lead from a company engaging in advocacy to being noticed and criticized by activists, to that criticism spurring a larger public response, to eventual damage to a company’s brand and reputation. Certain attributes of companies and advocacy strategies change the probability of each of these events happening, which means that (a) some companies are inherently more vulnerable than others and (b) companies can take intentional steps to reduce these probabilities in order to engage in advocacy while skirting damage. This chapter produces a set of expectations I test in the remainder of the book – that public backlash to corporate advocacy is a form of political speech and signaling rather than a statement about consumer behavior; that companies fear this backlash and “boycotts” primarily because of fear of brand damage, not necessarily sales; and that companies engage in particular strategies to either hide their political advocacy or defuse the public anger over it.

Like Hobbes, Spinoza portrays the social order as arising out of a state of nature in which people aren’t constrained by laws, in which we may do whatever we can do, and in which our natural egoism makes life insecure and wretched. Unlike Hobbes, Spinoza thinks right is coextensive with power even in civil society, not only in the state of nature. Spinoza’s best argument for this arguably relies on two assumptions: if there were a natural law constraining our behavior, it would have to be based on a divine command; but God cannot be a lawgiver; prescriptive laws assume that the commanded can disobey; and no one can disobey an omnipotent being. Although Spinoza takes right to be based on power, he denies that sovereigns have a right to rule just as they please. Like Machiavelli and Hobbes, he is conscious of the fragility of political power. Even if the sovereign’s right is theoretically absolute, individuals are roughly equal in power; so any sovereign must depend on having at his command a group of people who will obey his enforcement commands without being coerced. Like Machiavelli, he prefers forms of government in which this de facto constraint is institutionalized.

The introduction sets the scene. It places the book in a broader historiographical context, and outlines the key research questions underpinning it. It introduces key concepts, such as political culture, and outlines the range of sources used: chronicles, annals, saints' lives, liturgical texts, letters and charters. It draws attention to rapid changes in the political geography of medieval Latin Europe, and the self-perception of its inhabitants in relation to Byzantium and the Islamic world. The introduction also marks out what is new and different about the book: its focus not on the ruler, but on his subjects; their role in choosing a king, in defining the framework of rules for the successful exercise of the king’s office; and the extent to which they could also frame the practice of royal lordship. A defining theme is that these issues can best be explored by adopting a transeuropean perspective, which has not so far been attempted.

A legal analyses of Grotius’s ideas on sovereignty in De jure belli ac pacis shows that political power is in fact the natural right of the political association to defend its rights and foster its well-being, transferred to one (monarchy), a few (aristocracy) of many (popular government). The power transferred from the association to the ruler can be absolute or conditional, complete or partial, perpetual or temporary, and the ruler can hold the right to rule in property, or have a usufructuary or precarious right to it. Notwithstanding the people’s right to resist their ruler(s) in some well-described cases of abuse of power, Grotius regards the ruler with a property or usufructuary right in political power as supreme (‘sovereign’), even if his power is limited. According to Grotius, power is supreme if the ruler’s actions are not subject to the legal control of another. Abuse of power beyond its limits is not an act of the political ruler, but of someone infringing on another’s rights.

Over the last century, many philosophers have argued in favour of a liberal-egalitarian accommodation of capitalism, in which the liberty of the market is to be combined with an egalitarian distribution of property. Theorists of positive freedom, amongst others, have been prominent in arguing for the liberal-egalitarian accommodation. They have argued that an egalitarian distribution of private property is necessary to give every citizen equal positive freedom. To lead an autonomous life, every citizen needs control over some private property. The liberal-egalitarian accommodation to capitalism has come under threat in the last decades, as documented by a renewed widening of inequalities in wealth and income.In this essay, I will argue that this predicament requires us to look at one important precondition of the positive freedom argument. This precondition I call the de-politization of private property. Private property is conceived of as a purely private phenomenon, which has no effects on the exercise of political power. However, whether this precondition is met is a contingent matter; and so defenders of the positive freedom argument therefore need to turn their attention to the problem posed by the relation between private property and political power.