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.

This chapter studies the works of Jules Verne, primarily his forgotten work The Purchase of the North Pole (1889). Providing ideational background, it compares Charles Fourier’s fantasy of the anthropogenic correction of the Earth’s axis in Theory of the Four Movements (1808) with Eugène Huzar’s secularisation of the apocalypse as the result of technoscientific intervention in The End of the World Through Science (1855). Delving into The Purchase of the North Pole, the chapter analyses how Verne exposes the Promethean ambitions of the Baltimore Gun Club by acutely describing the imminent natural disasters following their attempt to correct the axis and climate of the Earth. It concludes that Verne represented climate intervention as a potentially catastrophic practice, rendering the planetary consequences of anthropogenic climate change intelligible through an apocalyptic rhetoric.

One of the outcomes of the recent demographic shift to cities was a concomitant insecurity about identity. This was exploited by fraudsters, including the notorious Shakespeare forger, John Payne Collier. News of his misdemeanours broke in the summer, when the country was also learning about George Eliot’s ‘real’ identity. Unlike her contemporaries, Eliot’s identity could not be secured by a group or network of friends and acquaintances, which made her vulnerable to the machinations of Joseph Liggins, who claimed to have written her fiction. The revelation of her identity was coldly received by some women writers, who might have feared for their own reputations, and The Athenaeum, which sought to pillory Eliot as a distraction whilst they championed Payne Collier. Eliot’s own take on the identity question may be seen in ‘The Lifted Veil’, which defends the necessity of the multiplicity of identity, and of a degree of mystery.

The Reich leadership’s initial plan to remain in the background while chartered companies managed day-to-day operations in the colonies soon proved untenable. This chapter details how private companies failed to establish durable state organisations, forcing the Reich into an uneasy choice between abandoning its colonies or assuming direct control. The time-honoured model of the company-state promised a self-sustaining cycle of coercion and extraction, but in practice ventures from South West Africa to New Guinea proved fragile, underfunded, and dependent on Reich support. In East Africa, the German East African Society secured a coastal concession from the sultan of Zanzibar, only to provoke the Abushiri Revolt just as a more permanent consolidation seemed within reach. These failures exposed the fragility of an empire built on paper claims rather than effective occupation. Bismarck wavered between withdrawal and deeper involvement, until military interventions – most notably Wissmann’s campaign in East Africa – committed the Reich to a more direct role.

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.