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 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.

In this chapter, we outline how foreign aid and migration management practices impact governance. To do so, we set out to define a new category of aid – migration management aid – and estimate its size, distribution, and impact. We begin by taking a global picture – examining the trends, challenges, and opportunities that migration management aid presents in the twenty-first century – and then narrow our analysis to the EUTF and recipient countries in Africa. We identify three pathways for how migration management aid impacts authoritarianism and repression and explain how we explore these pathways through four case studies: Kenya, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Finally, we preview the lessons that can be learned if policymakers continue to intertwine aid and migration management.

In this chapter, we trace the history of how the EU emerged as a leader in using development aid and diplomacy to restrict migration, particularly from Africa. We also broadly describe the scope of migration management projects, including their intended impact on state capacity, economic development, a country’s domestic governance including civil society, and the return of a country’s nationals via forced and voluntary repatriation. We then turn to the EUTF, analyzing where and how the EU spent more than €5 billion across the African continent. We explore which actors benefited the most, what projects received the most funding, and where these interventions had the most impact. Overall, the EUTF prioritized state capacity, security, and economic development, while civil society and other non-state actors received significantly smaller allocations.

This contribution questions the reality and possibility of the claim that the European Union (EU) is founded on “representative democracy”. In the absence of a European demos, three consecutive difficulties are analyzed: the question of the unity of the represented, the representation of citizens as EU citizens, and, finally, the quest for representativeness of the European society. The reflection’s conclusion points towards the complementarity and inseparability of the representative and participatory forms of democracy in a transnational context, with the participatory forms adding a transnational dimension to the European representative democracy.

This chapter reviews the historical development of the regulation of waste and chemicals in both international law and European Union (EU) law after the 1972 Stockholm Conference as well as some of the subsequent trends and themes. It also highlights the relevant interactions between EU and international law on these issues. The chapter ends with a discussion of how the regulatory frameworks related to waste, chemicals, and products must be coordinated – both in international law and EU law – if we are to realize the vision of a toxic-free circular economy.

Although only two of the 26 principles enshrined in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration are devoted specifically to the protection of nature, they have encouraged a large number of states to conclude various international agreements of a sectoral nature, which were supplemented in 1992 by a global agreement on biodiversity. In addition to tracing the influence of the Stockholm Declaration on international nature protection law, this chapter discusses the European Union’s (EU) role in the development of international law in this field. Conversely, the chapter also looks at how EU internal rules on nature protection have been influenced by the obligations stemming from multilateral environment agreements and illustrates the cross-fertilisation that has occurred between EU and international law.

This chapter explores the evolving interplay between the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Union (EU) in safeguarding fundamental rights in the context of media policy. Both organisations have a long history in media policy, and both have extensively adapted their standards to counter recent threats resulting from digitisation and democratic backsliding. In this process the EU has significantly expanded its safeguards for fundamental rights, traditionally the CoE’s main focus. This convergence raises the possibility of conflict but also that of mutual reinforcement. In this chapter we first sketch the history of increasing convergence between EU and CoE media policy and provide an overview of each institution’s recent overlapping activities. We then argue for a closer relationship between the two institutions in the context of fundamental rights in media policy, focusing on the need for consistency between their respective standards, the normative guidance CoE standards can provide to the EU, and the practical implementation of fundamental rights standards EU enforcement can ensure. We close by suggesting ways in which a mutually reinforcing relationship between the two institutions can be operationalised through closer legal and organisational ties.

This chapter traces how contemporary media pass through different regulatory zones and examines the different rules that govern each zone and how the zones relate to each other. It briefly charts the recent and ongoing evolution of the media, from analogue roots to generative AI futures, and notes the fundamental rights and regulatory ramifications of technology-driven innovations. It draws an analytical line from these conceptualisations through to the contemporary threats to media freedom that regulation urgently needs to address.

The contemporary proliferation of ‘reimagining’ as a cultural practice has evolved from a largely personal or artistic pursuit into a broader societal and technological phenomenon. A diverse range of actors – artists, political actors, corporations, advocacy organizations, and minority communities – now routinely engage in the reworking of popular works, symbols, and culturally significant designs. Against the backdrop of the shift from a linear economic model toward a circular economy, this chapter contends that a substantive recalibration of IP law is required. It argues that reimagining practices should be protected from excessive control by IP rights-holders through both legislative and judicial intervention. In doing so, the chapter contributes to ongoing debates concerning the appropriate equilibrium between exclusive IP rights and the fundamental right to freedom of expression.