The Philippines offers a distinctive case for examining China’s influence in Southeast Asia. While China has become a key economic partner, territorial disputes continue to dominate bilateral relations. This makes the Philippines a critical test for Beijing’s strategic intentions of securing a peaceful periphery for shared prosperity, while countering Western efforts to contain its rise. Building on Filipino scholarship, this chapter underscores how the Philippine domestic context creates significant obstacles to translating Chinese influence into mutually beneficial outcomes. Institutions, perceptions, national identity, and persistent governance problems have consistently blunted the positive effects of China’s outreach. By tracing key moments and patterns across five decades of official ties, the chapter demonstrates how these domestic factors repeatedly condition China’s limited success. It offers insights into enduring local constraints that define the scope of China’s expanding influence in the Philippines, and what this means for China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia.

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.

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 reflects on my experience as the Director of the ACT Parks and Conservation Service, highlighting my involvement in the Mulligans Flat-Goorooyarroo Woodland Experiment at Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary (MFGO) from 2004 to 2022. It discusses the evolution of the Experiment, a long-term initiative aimed at woodland restoration, and its impact on the ACT Parks and Conservation Service. The experiment not only provided valuable insights into woodland management, but also fostered innovation and community engagement.

The chapter emphasises the creation of a predator-proof fence at Mulligans Flat, collaboration with academic researchers, and the integration of evidence-based management practices. Key challenges, such as reallocation of staff and developing specialised knowledge, are explored, as well as the transformation of conservation efforts in the ACT. The Experiment and MFWS has become a model for adaptive conservation, highlighting the importance of partnerships between government, researchers and the community in promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management practices.

This chapter reflects on the future of governance in an era where corporate-driven, private arrangements increasingly dominate key sectors, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology and beyond. While public power still contributes through research funding and normative frameworks, the sheer scale and speed of private actors often surpass traditional regulatory capacities. Governance today rests to a considerable extent with the internal factions of corporations—engineers, compliance teams, and public relations—who shape techno-normative frameworks with little public accountability. The chapter argues that governance by emulation offers a pragmatic, albeit imperfect, path forward. Emulating public law principles—such as accountability, self-governance, and due process—into private contexts can inject public-minded values into profit-driven structures. However, traditional private law mechanisms, such as contracts and fiduciary duties, need repurposing to address the scale and public significance of corporate governance. Similarly, the role of infrastructure, code, and technical frameworks in shaping governance must be acknowledged alongside conventional normative tools. While these developments hold both promise and peril, they also mirror the incremental evolution of liberal public institutions. By embedding public law ideals into emerging governance constellations, we may foster accountability structures capable of addressing the complexities of modern global power dynamics—marking a critical step toward a more balanced and responsive future governance framework.

This chapter introduces Decentralized Finance (DeFi), a rapidly growing area that enables financial transactions such as lending, borrowing, and trading to occur without traditional intermediaries. You will learn the foundational components of DeFi by exploring token standards, such as ERC20 and ERC721, stablecoins and their mechanisms for maintaining price stability, and wrapped tokens that facilitate cross-chain interoperability. The chapter explains how DeFi protocols are structured and how they function, focusing on core areas including decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, derivative markets, and yield farming. You will gain an understanding of key financial concepts adapted to blockchain systems, such as leverage, hedging, and impermanent loss. Particular attention is given to algorithmic innovations like automated market makers, flash loans, and synthetic asset creation. You will also study how oracles feed real-world data into smart contracts and how decentralized governance structures such as DAOs shape protocol evolution. Throughout the chapter, we emphasize the risks, incentives, and architectural trade-offs involved in designing and interacting with DeFi systems.

Chapter 7 examines Gulliver’s Travels Parts II and III, with particular focus on the role of ideology, namely religion and sectarianism, in the context of global politics and trade. Swift saw modern Europe as a once-unified constitutional and ideological system (Christendom) that fell into a state of decay – a process accelerated by ideologies and policies motivated by hubris and aggression, such as absolutism, militarism, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. In doing so he illustrated essential dynamics of modernity, science, technology, and globalization and implied that their unrestrained development would lead to conflict rather than cooperation. He painted a picture of Asian governments, namely Japan, as foils to European governments: while they were despotic at home, they followed rational self-interest abroad, enabling cordial trade relations and a balance of power. By contrast, modern European colonial powers are satirized as being blinded by the pursuit of commercial monopolies and hence objects of foreign manipulation.

Chapter 1 introduces the key concepts of the book, lays out the main argument, and discusses the empirical approach and data used in later chapters. It emphasizes that variation in governance outcomes cannot be understood without examining the incentives and interactions of politicians, bureaucrats, and voters. Ultimately, I argue that politicians in developing democracies have incentives to hire competent bureaucrats but will simultaneously retain tools to influence their career progression. Using tools of career control – interference in bureaucrats’ promotions, work locations, and day-to-day work tasks – politicians can extract bureaucratic loyalty. The introduction also situates the book within existing scholarship. The empirical strategy combines qualitative interviews, survey experiments, and observational data, largely drawn from Ghana but supplemented with comparative insights. Ultimately, the chapter frames the book as an inquiry into how the competing incentives of politicians and bureaucrats shape governance.

Chapter 7 reflects on the book’s findings and their broader implications. It underscores that state capacity is not determined solely by formal rules or resources, but by the everyday power relations between politicians and bureaucrats. Investments in infrastructure, personnel, or technology matter, but their effectiveness depends on how politicians and bureaucrats interact. The book highlights the “grey zone” between fully politicized and fully meritocratic systems, arguing that most states fall somewhere in between. Ghana exemplifies this dynamic, but the theory also applies elsewhere. Comparative evidence from India and Indonesia shows similar patterns: politicians exploit career controls to extract loyalty and manipulate bureaucratic action, especially in competitive electoral contexts. These parallels suggest the argument has broad external validity. The chapter also considers how the equilibrium might shift. Reforms that strengthen bureaucratic autonomy, insulate career management, or increase transparency in procurement could reduce partisan manipulation. Yet such reforms are politically difficult, as they challenge the very tools politicians rely on. By situating bureaucratic management at the heart of governance outcomes, the chapter points toward future research on how institutional design can mitigate corruption and enhance equitable service delivery in developing democracies.

Chapter 2 develops the theoretical framework that underpins the book. It argues that politicians in developing democracies face a dual incentive: they need competent bureaucrats who can implement programs effectively, yet they also desire control over those bureaucrats to secure loyalty and political advantage. As a result, politicians often recruit based on merit but retain formal or informal levers of influence, such as control over promotions or geographic transfers. The chapter distinguishes between programmatic and non-programmatic distribution, emphasizing that politicians often require bureaucratic loyalty to engage in non-programmatic distribution. Further, politicians have greater incentives to engage in non-programmatic distribution when local elections are highly competitive. Accordingly, I expect that intense local electoral competition will result in worse governance outcomes, including higher levels of corruption and partisan allocation of public goods. This framework provides the theoretical lens to interpret the empirical evidence presented in subsequent chapters and situates the book’s contribution within broader debates on state capacity, bureaucratic autonomy, clientelism, and democratic accountability.

Cities concentrate opportunity and inequality. This chapter shows how rapid urbanization has generated both prosperity and exclusion. It analyses the governance challenges of megacities, including infrastructure gaps, housing crises, and fragmented authority. It advocates for institutional reforms to promote inclusive urban development, where growth does not mean gated prosperity for the few but opportunity for the many.

This chapter begins by outlining the past trends and the present trajectory of employment-related dispute resolution at international organizations. Second, the historic evolution of the statutory basis of administrative tribunals at the United Nations is analysed, suggesting that Member State governance organs are prepared to revise procedures, but are reluctant to address the transparency of employment law at international organizations. Third, and in conclusion – extending this book’s emphasis on concisely and clearly introducing the law – the incorporation of general legal principles of international administrative law into the Statutes of international administrative tribunals is proposed.

The conclusion reviews the book’s theory of governance using the final example of space as a site of governance and queerness.