Part IV examines in greater detail a central concept in the preceding chapters: conditionality. Its ubiquity throughout the previous sections raises the question whether it might suffice to explain representation. The question is first approached by examining how conditionality operated in cases where ruler power was weak. Under such conditions, it led to "second-best constitutionalism," a pattern of governance emerging where rulers lacked power over the most powerful and developed conditional relations with groups they endowed with counterbalancing resources. This explains representative governance in cases where the regime was not able to control all social groups: representation was focused on the groups with conditional relations with the crown. This helps explain the cases of Hungary and Poland, which are treated here at greater length, as well as Sweden, Denmark, and the Holy Roman Empire, which are treated more briefly.

Russia provides the final testing ground for the concept of conditionality. This chapter shows how the limited incidents of representation in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Russia can be explained through the conditional rights to land granted to the lower nobility in order to counter the strength of the upper nobility, the boyars. This makes Russia another case of "second-best-constitutionalism." At that level, it displayed striking similarities to patterns observed in England, leading to the conclusion that the two cases differed not in the institutions that were being created but in the capacity of the state to enforce them. This position is at odds with common conceptions of the Russian tsar as all-powerful, so the chapter offers evidence to counter this assumption. It examines the weak control over the boyars, the limited taxing capabilities, and the mass enserfment of peasants to show how they either reflect or result from state weaknesses. The chapter then describes how these conditions interacted with the emergence of representation in Russia, as well as how they explain its demise.