Three concepts associated with ‘good governance’, referring to the quality of governance processes and outcomes, are examined in this chapter: accountability, legitimacy and trust. For each concept, definitions are reviewed and characteristics identified. The chapter investigates accountability through key themes of complexity and challenges associated with delivering on downward accountability in the context of decentralisation. Complexity arises from the number and range of actors involved in co-management, situated at different administrative levels, with multiple demands on and mechanisms for accountability. Different forms of legitimacy and trust are introduced and reviewed, including input, output and throughput legitimacy and dispositional, rational, affinitive and procedural forms of trust. Challenges to delivering and maintaining legitimacy and trust in the context of co-management and solutions to these are identified.

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.

Chapter 4 reconceptualises investor stewardship by tracing its historical, conceptual, and economic roots and advancing a theory of stewardship as delegated, relational power. It unpacks the evolving meanings of stewardship – from early moral connotations to contemporary use in corporate governance and investment management. Rejecting a narrow principal–agent lens, it reframes stewardship as a multidimensional practice embedded in complex delegation structures and layered accountabilities. The chapter introduces a tripartite model of stewardship – as power exercised by institutional investors, on behalf of clients and beneficiaries, and for the benefit of wider, often unseen, stakeholders – and a four-part relational model: client stewardship, end-investor stewardship, asset stewardship, and sustainability stewardship. These relationships expose the plural and sometimes conflicting responsibilities investors bear within a fragmented investment chain. It also considers the economic rationale for investor stewardship, highlighting incentives, constraints, and portfolio dynamics. Finally, it introduces the enlightened steward as a pluralistic figure balancing private mandates with systemic effects.

Decisions by international organizations typically neglect the interests of non-human animals. The chapter investigates whether and how animal interests can and should be brought to bear in the decision-making of IOs. It works through cognate concepts ranging from animal citizenship over animal representation to animal consideration and animal deliberation. The physical limits of human-animal communication foreclose responsiveness and accountability to the animals themselves. The chapter therefore prefers the term animal ‘consideration’ rather than animal ‘representation’. After this groundwork, the chapter briefly canvasses some proposals for bringing animal interests to bear in in democratic political processes. With due modifications, some schemes could be applied to the work of international organizations. These range from animal ombudspersons, strengthening the voice of pro-animal CSOs through compulsory notice-and-comment procedures and extended speaking rights in the organizations, mandatory animal welfare impact assessment, and more. All attempts for upstepping the existing rudimentary schemes in the direction of a better and stronger consideration of animal interests in human politics will require deep cultural and social change, to a large extent beyond the purview of the law.

Calls for international administrations are still present in contemporary international relations, from the war in the Middle East to the Ukraine. This chapter summarises the main argument developed in the book, notably the necessity to apprehend international administrations through the reality on the ground. This means to pay special attention to the confluence of claims of political authority deployed by international officials and concomitant claims of accountability such practices of authority elicit. Finally, I discuss the various possibilities to strengthen accountability mechanisms for the UN (and for other international organisation).

This chapter introduces the main approach developed in International Leviathans through (1) a sociological understanding of sovereignty and (2) the concept of international administration. First, the chapter presents a new take of the debate between Kelsen and Schmitt around sovereignty and presents the sociological understanding of sovereignty by unpacking sovereignty practices. It makes the case for analysing the socio-political or socio-legal struggles happening between competing claims of political authority and accountability. It then discusses and theorises the concept of ‘international administration’, pointing out the limitations of two strands of the literature: the functionalist approach, defining international administrations through the functions they ought to perform as underlined in their mandate, and the normative approach, focusing on self-proclaimed goals and objectives. I posit that sovereignty practices deployed by international officials are social practices which cannot be understood solely through mandates or stated goals – they need to be understood through the reality on the ground, created by claims of political authority deployed by actors and the concomitant claims of accountability these practices elicit.

This chapter presents the central claim of the book, arguing that sovereignty practices emerge at the confluence of struggles – on the one hand, by actors asserting the political authority over a specific territory and, on the other hand, through resistance to this move by actors pursuing accountability and the responsibilisation of sovereign actors. I claim that practices of political authority – expressed through effective rule over territory – are central, constitutive acts of world politics, entailing specific obligations. Broadening the study of sovereignty practices beyond state relations, I argue that understanding how specific actors such as international organisations act as sovereign actors opens up new perspectives on international accountability and obligations in world politics.

Chapter 5 shows that development banks provide policy-makers with the ability to address policy contestation. I document the varying policy contestation from labor unions, civil society organizations, and legislators to each type of internationalization support: acquisitions and greenfield investments, project finance, and mergers among domestic firms. I then show that this variation obeyed differences in the salience of associated domestic effects and in BNDES’ funding strategy for each intervention. The chapter shows that BNDES relied increasingly on providing equity financed through market sources to finance politically sensitive overseas investments. These dynamics reveal the “fragile autonomy” of states under democracy: their capacity to support national firms in global markets depends on their ability to strategically mobilize or obfuscate their interventions and pushes them toward more market-conforming instruments of industrial policy.

The book’s insights require recognizing the strengths of lower-income people, though constrained and facing a wide variety of adaptation challenges. Because successful adaptations require government commitment, leaders must not evade their accountability to address problems of migration, land dispossession, and health risks. The weak healthcare effort, from medical services to vaccinations and nutrition, requires greater investment. Administrative effectiveness is important, but adaptation fairness is also crucial. No one should assume that people will be environmentally responsible when incomes are jeopardized without incentives to adjust their behavior. It is an additional challenge if vulnerable people must migrate apart from state resettlement programs. Tradeoffs across sectors pose challenges when efforts to address one sector’s threat undermine another. Addressing growing problems of energy shortages and fossil-fuel pollution cannot rely on solar and wind energy to avoid reliance on controversial hydro and nuclear power. High wealth concentration must be assessed in terms of both the risks and opportunities they present to sound adaptations. Southeast Asian countries’ advantages of strong connections within and beyond the region depend on geopolitical neutrality despite provocations.

This chapter concludes the book by reflecting on the implications of the findings for democratic representation in a globalized world. It argues that globalization has introduced structural constraints that alter the relationship between voters and elected representatives, compelling mainstream parties to adapt their electoral strategies in ways that threaten democratic accountability. The chapter ties together insights from the cross-national analyses, survey experiments, and in-depth case studies to show how parties recalibrate their promises, adopt ambiguous or populist rhetoric, and shift responsibility for broken pledges to external actors. It emphasizes that although these strategies may be electorally rational, they can erode the clarity of democratic choice and the mechanisms through which voters hold politicians accountable. The chapter closes by discussing the normative and institutional implications for democratic resilience and responsiveness in an era of enduring international interdependence.

This chapter introduces the concept of promissory representation: the idea that democratic accountability hinges on political actors making and keeping campaign promises. We trace the development of this concept through key scholarly contributions, distinguishing between mandate and trustee models of representation, and arguing that the former provides stronger mechanisms of accountability. We also address several critiques: that voters may not remember promises, lack the information to evaluate fulfillment, or prioritize other factors. Drawing on comparative research, particularly from the Comparative Pledges Project, we show that election promises remain central to democratic politics and that voters do consider promise fulfillment when evaluating parties. We also discuss how ideology and partisanship shape these assessments and argue that promissory representation remains a valuable framework for understanding the effects of globalization on democratic accountability.

Chapter 9 investigates how political parties strategically use ambiguity in their campaign pledges to navigate the policy constraints imposed by globalization. As international integration limits domestic policy discretion, parties – particularly those in government – face a dilemma: how to appeal to voters while avoiding promises they may be unable to fulfill. This chapter combines observational evidence with original cross-national data on pledge clarity to demonstrate that parties increasingly rely on ambiguous language to maintain electoral appeal while reducing the risks of future accountability. The analysis reveals that this trend is most pronounced for governing parties and those operating in highly globalized economies, where the tension between responsiveness and responsibility is particularly acute. Rather than abandoning pledges entirely, these parties blur their commitments, complicating voters’ ability to hold them accountable and thereby altering the democratic chain of delegation. Ambiguity thus emerges not as a signal of incompetence or deception but as a strategic adaptation to the pressures of international economic interdependence.

Chapter 2 develops the book’s theoretical contribution: a model explaining how partisan inclusion fosters de facto autonomy in electoral management bodies. The chapter distinguishes between de jure independence, which is often established through constitutional or legal reforms, and de facto autonomy, which emerges only when political actors perceive electoral management bodies as legitimate, transparent, and predictable. It outlines how partisan engagement can build trust, reduce informational asymmetries, and create mutual constraints that deter manipulation. The chapter presents an “institutional pathways” approach, detailing how some electoral commissions have followed a process of legal reform, stakeholder embedding, and administrative routinization that lead to autonomous practice. It further examines how consultation mechanisms, conflict-resolution procedures, and internal accountability practices reinforce autonomy over time. The chapter concludes with a set of comparative expectations linking variation in inclusion to observable differences in election quality and crisis resilience across “cases”.

This book concludes with a summary of key types of machine translation use discussed in the project. The conclusion outlines ethical principles of multilingual AI use including the potential or intended legal value of a message, the stability of the information and its potential to be reused, and the need for any uses of machine translation to be transparent and as far as possible consensual and cybersecure. The conclusion also examines some of the challenges posed by the broader project. It offers a reflection on the question of accountability and on the difficulties of living well with technology in environments that elevate cost efficiency above other values.

Accountability is a foundational judicial value and a tenet of the rule of law. Drawing on contemporary examples from the UK, EU, USA, Latin America, Taiwan, and China, this chapter examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to assist judicial decision-making at varying stages – ranging from case-sorting tools and legal research aids to fully automated ‘smart courts’. By categorising these judicial uses by level of AI intervention, the chapter interrogates two common claims: (1) that greater AI involvement increases threats to judicial accountability, and (2) that judicial oversight ensures such accountability is preserved. Contrary to these common claims, we argue that accountability is compromised at all levels of AI integration. This occurs because AI systems: (1) obscure transparency and open justice; (2) erode judicial independence and reasoning by amplifying cognitive biases; and (3) hinder appellate review, thus limiting opportunities to contest decisions. While governments often assert that judicial supervision and discretion are sufficient safeguards, the chapter argues that such protections are increasingly ineffective amid pervasive and elusive AI systems.