Chapter 6 offers an empirical analysis of stewardship disclosures under the UK Stewardship Code, using text analytics – including text length, readability, phrase overlap, lexical similarity, frequency analysis, and structural topic modelling – to examine reporting under the 2012 and 2020 iterations. It reveals shifts in narrative style, thematic focus, and institutional engagement. Topic modelling shows a move from governance-centric narratives in 2012 to a broader thematic repertoire in 2020, including ESG integration, multi-asset stewardship, and systemic risk. While the UK Code 2020 prompted more reflective disclosures in some cases, others remain formulaic, relying on generic language and procedural reporting. Patterns of convergence and divergence reflect institutional type, resources, and stewardship capacity. The analysis underscores both the promise and limits of stewardship reporting – highlighting its role in fostering innovation and reflection, while exposing challenges in achieving consistent, meaningful implementation. By unpacking form and substance, the chapter contributes to debates on institutionalising stewardship as a credible mechanism of investor accountability and long-term public value.

This chapter introduces Governance by Emulation, a framework analyzing how public law models, particularly administrative and constitutional mechanisms like individual rights adjudication, are reproduced in private and regulatory governance. Focusing on corporate-controlled content moderation, it examines the European Union’s out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (ODSs) under the Digital Services Act and Meta’s Oversight Board–conceptualized as Emulated Guardians. These institutions borrow the legitimacy of courts to regulate novel, bureaucratic private power structures while addressing public demands for accountability. Grounded in law, sociology, and political science, the chapter outlines the book’s methodology and contributions. It delves into four inquiries: the actors involved, their tasks, the power they seek to discipline, and how public law principles are adapted for private governance. These dynamics highlight emulation’s duality: it promises innovation yet risks performative legitimacy devoid of substantive reform. By situating Emulated Guardians within broader global governance challenges, this chapter frames content moderation as a microcosm of future issues in sectors like AI, biotechnology, and space exploration. It concludes that while governance by emulation addresses urgent accountability demands, its efficacy depends on public engagement and institutional evolution, offering a critical lens to assess emerging accountability structures beyond state control.

This chapter examines Meta’s Oversight Board, a pioneering experiment in governance by emulation that adapts individual rights adjudication to the private governance of social media platforms. Operational since 2020, the Board has been celebrated as a step toward greater accountability while also criticized as a superficial PR strategy. Through its structure, practices, and public perception, the Board blends public- and private-law principles, presenting itself as operationally independent and adjudicating disputes based on international human rights norms. However, its circumscribed authority raises questions about its capacity to elicit substantive structural change at Meta. The chapter situates the Oversight Board as an Emulated Guardian, designed to mimic adjudication but primarily serving as a performative tool to lend legitimacy to Meta’s content moderation. While initially dismissed as symbolic, the Board’s incremental expansion of its guardianship role highlights its dialectical potential: it is both limited by its private nature and empowered by its adjudicatory appearance. This case study progresses through six analytical steps, exploring the Board’s origins, institutional structure, decision-making processes, and practical impact, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of regulating private power in a globalized digital environment.

Chapter 7 develops a multidimensional typology of investor stewardship, offering a framework to interpret its expanding scope and practice across the investment ecosystem. It identifies five dimensions: levels of intervention (micro, portfolio, system, and macro); stewardship actors (direct and indirect, across the investment chain); targeted assets (extending beyond public equity to debt, infrastructure, and real assets); motivations (financial value, ESG risk, and sustainability goals); and operational means (capital allocation, engagement, collaboration, and escalation). The chapter introduces the concept of blended stewardship to capture how institutional investors increasingly operate across levels and strategies to address complex, systemic challenges. Drawing on qualitative insights from the second-generation UK Stewardship Code disclosures, it shows how stewardship is diversifying in form, focus, and asset class. Framing stewardship as a pluralistic and relational practice – shaped by institutional roles, market structures, and normative expectations – the chapter provides the analytical foundations for rethinking how stewardship can meet the governance demands of the twenty-first century.

This chapter evaluates the efficacy of Emulated Guardians, focusing on the EU’s out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (ODSs) and Meta’s Oversight Board, using criteria adapted from Peter Cane’s administrative law framework: rules, authority, and culture. It argues that neither body currently functions as a truly effective adjudicatory overseer of corporate power due to weak mandates and structural limitations. These shortcomings reflect a broader challenge of emulative institutions: they replicate formal structures from public law but lack the enabling sociopolitical contexts—such as democratic rulemaking or judicial authority—that underpin their role models. However, the chapter also identifies the performative potential of these bodies. By leveraging adjudicative symbolism and public expectations, both ODSs and the Oversight Board can incrementally expand their normative authority. This process, while slow and fraught, mirrors historical adjudicative strategies seen in domestic and international courts. Moreover, early practices show potential for innovation, such as integrating large language models into decision-making. By analyzing rules, authority, and culture, the chapter highlights the ambivalence of Emulated Guardians: while they risk becoming ceremonial “accountability theater,” they may also lay the groundwork for meaningful control over powerful private organizations. These findings have implications far beyond content moderation, applying to emerging governance challenges in AI, biotechnology, and other globalized sectors.

How can we regulate private power in a globalized, digitized world where state-centered sovereignty, territorial boundaries, and traditional legal frameworks fall short? This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book, its arguments, methodology, and contributions, addressing the urgent need for accountability mechanisms to tame the increasingly unilateral global governance by a handful of corporations. Focusing on content moderation, it examines two key case studies: the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and Meta’s Oversight Board. Both exemplify “emulation,” where public law mechanisms, particularly constitutional and administrative, are adapted to private governance.

Analyzing these “Emulated Guardians”–institutions borrowing the legitimacy of courts while operating in private or hybrid contexts–this book highlights their reliance on performativity and public perception to assert authority. Through interdisciplinary analysis, empirical findings, and expert interviews, the book reveals the ambivalent outcomes of emulation: promising tools for accountability yet sometimes lacking practical efficacy. Ultimately, this work frames these mechanisms as harbingers of new accountability norms, arguing that governance in the digital age demands not only novel institutions but also robust public engagement. It situates these developments within broader debates about power, legitimacy, and the evolving role of public law ideals in globalized, networked environments.

Chapter 5 traces the regulatory evolution of shareholder – and more broadly, investor – stewardship in the UK, from early investor-led initiatives to the UK Stewardship Code 2020. It begins with the Institutional Shareholders’ Committee, whose statements between 1991 and 2009 gradually reframed activism as stewardship. It then examines the shift to regulator-led stewardship, marked by the Financial Reporting Council’s first-generation UK Stewardship Code (2010/2012), which aimed to foster a market for engagement but remained rooted in shareholder oversight of listed equities. The chapter next assesses the second-generation code (2020), which moves beyond shareholder engagement towards a broader model of investor stewardship. This redefenition embeds ESG considerations, systemic risk, and sustainable value within a principles-based, narrative-driven regime. The analysis also considers the institutional mechanisms supporting implementation and the code’s influence as a global benchmark. While the UK regime has pushed the regulatory frontier, key tensions persist – particularly around enforcement, the translation of normative goals into practice, and the limits of soft law in governing investor conduct.

Chapter 1 reframes how institutional investors exercise power and are held to account in a world shaped by financial intermediation, systemic risk, long-term value concerns, and evolving societal expectations. Tracing the evolution and limits of shareholder governance – including the rise of shareholder activism and the contested promise of shareholder democracy – it introduces the book’s central puzzle: how to institutionalise investor stewardship in ways that are normatively coherent, empirically grounded, and responsive to systemic interdependence. The chapter sets out a model of enlightened shareholder – and more broadly, investor – stewardship, defined by multi-level responsibility, plural accountability, and attention to ‘unseen others’, which reimagines institutional investors as custodians of capital across time, stakeholders, and systems. It outlines the book’s tripartite contribution – conceptual, empirical, and regulatory – and presents its analytical trajectory, interpretive framework, and institutional vision. Anchored in the UK but with global relevance, the chapter sets the stage for rethinking capital’s role in serving public and private interests.