The Introduction outlines the central question of the book: how should we interpret the TRIPS Agreement when addressing the legitimacy crisis of international intellectual property (IP) rights? The COVID-19 pandemic and current trade tensions highlight both structural and cyclical tensions of the global knowledge economy. In this context of instability, the introduction sets the stage by considering the TRIPS as the structuring agreement for international IP protection. The chapter introduces this republican conception of non-domination as the core normative framework and previews how this concept will be applied across the book’s chapters. The chapter sets out the interdisciplinary methodology, bridging legal analysis and political theory, and clarifies the intended contribution: a reframing of the TRIPS that takes its legal character seriously and evaluates its moral legitimacy as part of international law.

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 focuses on small-state defiance to show the limits of big-power influence. It compares the manners of and degrees to which Malaysia and Vietnam choose to defy China while still deferring and partnering with their giant neighbor in the development, diplomatic, and defense domains. In brief, Vietnam has demonstrated a greater readiness than Malaysia to defy China not just on security and sovereignty issues (most notably in the South China Sea disputes) but also economic and connectivity matters (primarily 5G wireless, and to some extent the BRI projects as well). Besides, Hanoi has also displayed a tendency to defy Beijing in a more direct, open, and costly manner than Malaysia. The authors argue that different combinations of legitimation pathways lead these two countries’ elites to selectively display varying degrees and patterns of defiance behavior toward a powerful neighbor, even while they continue to show deference to and collaborate with it.

The United Nations and its bodies have ‘opened up’ to a broad range of non-state actors over the last three decades, including for-profit actors and their representatives. The shift is reflected in the UN’s sustainable development goals and the Global Compact, emphasizing public-private partnerships; in greater participation of corporations at treaty conferences; in trade group roles as observers at organizations; and in multi-stakeholder projects. Yet international organizations have generally not developed robust responses to legitimacy concerns about businesses becoming closely involved in lawmaking and governance projects. These concerns focus on interest group capture, entrenchment of western economic elites, creeping privatization, and erasure of public deliberation. Indeed, the participation of for-profit actors and their representatives has largely been a ‘silent revolution’: under-heralded and under-examined. This chapter argues that responses to for-profit roles in the work of international organizations tend to express one of two logics, not yet reconciled. The logic of ‘representation’ values public authority, interest representation, transparency, and accountability. The logic of ‘expedience’ values pragmatic problem-solving, efficiency, knowledge, and progress. Each has different priorities and blind spots, encompasses an array of theoretical approaches, and would push the international system in a different direction.

Historically, democratic progress has been widely understood as correlated to the representative quality of institutions. Representativeness has been seen as essential for the social appropriation of institutions in societies analyzed as having a class structure. In the national political order, parties were intended to represent the different social interests, and in the particular context of labour, the recognition of trade unions played this role. It is in this spirit that the International Labour Organization (ILO) included trade unions in its various bodies when it was created a century ago, and, since then, the ILO has served as a reference point for representation at the international level.While this conception of representativeness remains relevant, the scope of its application has become more limited. A growing number of essential issues, such as the conservation of the environment or the protection of privacy, are, in fact, directly political: they structure our common world. In this context, authority and legitimacy carry weight in the public debate. Representativeness, by which we can ‘measure’ the social weight of a speaker, is only secondary. ‘Public voices’ have come to have greater relevance, due to their ability to resonate with, and thereby focus and shape, public opinion. These ‘public voices’ are expressed by expert groups with specific subject-area knowledge, or by individuals who have benefited from the haphazard nature of media coverage. As a result, their integration into international life can no longer be institutionalized in the ‘old fashioned’ way.

Human genetic information is best understood as a non-rivalrous and non-excludable social resource, making it well suited to commons-based governance as a complement to state- and market-led models. Using the case of deCODE Genetics in Iceland, the chapter shows the practical viability of such an approach, underscoring the importance of public cooperation, ethical safeguards, and consent. Yet the model faces a central dilemma: the need for broad data sharing to advance research versus the individual participant’s right to privacy. The chapter reframes this tension by conceptualizing privacy not as the negation of sharing but as one of its dimensions. It then resolves the dilemma by proposing a participatory, procedurally legitimate system in which stakeholders (including data contributors, researchers, and clinicians) collectively determine rules of access, use, and privacy through democratic deliberation. This approach moves beyond top-down declarations and instead establishes a self-governing genomic commons. A mutual benefit, procedurally democratic framework offers a promising path to realize the genome’s potential for public health while safeguarding individual rights.

There is a deep scepticism concerning the idea that AI should be used in the making of judicial decisions. There are normative risks such as inaccuracy and a lack of explainability and accountability, and there are sociological risks to public trust in the judicial system. Prominent legal instruments such as the EU AI Act, Vilnius Convention, and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seek to set some clear guardrails around the use of AI in judicial decision-making, but face two problems. First, they underappreciate the Collingridge dilemma, in which premature intervention risks over-regulation, while belated intervention risks under-regulation. Second, there is a misplaced faith in the power of legal obligations to provide sufficient (and enforceable) guidance. This chapter asks what model of governance should be adopted for the use of AI in courts. In doing so, it undertakes a survey of the current status and evolution of AI technology in courts, examines how we should evaluate risks, and considers competing governance models. It argues that a model of anticipatory governance, often suitable for long and complex problems, should be adopted, and some of the implications are discussed.

This chapter begins by exploring the concept of legitimacy, which the CCP regime seeks to achieve in part through its project of legal construction. It employs official data and primary documents to present multiple aspects of access to justice nominally afforded by the legal system: training of a cadre of legal professionals, provision of institutions for dispute resolution—including mediation, petition, and litigation, establishment of state-sponsored legal aid, and implementation of an official campaign to imbue Chinese citizens with legal consciousness. It concludes with an assessment of China’s model of legal development, reviewing arguments about law and order, order maintenance, pure legality, normative and prerogative aspects of the dual state, and legal dualism. The illiberal system of law is a powerful tool in the hands of the party-state.

Chapter 4 uses original survey data to test the book’s theoretical claims. The first set of findings focuses on property rights. Disputes over state land takings are concentrated where land values are greatest: close to urban centers. The second set of results focuses on how the legal system channels conflict; grievances of rural residents over state land takings often go unresolved. In the wake of state land takings, rural residents use law to fight village leaders and neighbors in order to get a bigger share of limited state compensation for lost land. The data also reveal which villagers are more likely to take action in the face of land grievances. Possible actions include mediating, petitioning, litigating, protesting, and contacting media or a local People’s Congress deputy. Personal connections to the party-state are key, while legal knowledge and party membership have no effect. The third set of results focuses on the official project of legal construction. Data analysis shows that state legal programming changes citizens’ legal consciousness and increases regime legitimacy, as measured by trust in the party-state, for the majority of citizens. Fourth, for the minority of the population that directly experiences grievances over land, trust in the state declines.

The Introduction opens with a (personal) precursor to the writing of the book. It discusses the methodological, normative, and theoretical basis of the book. It offers an overview of the argument and the chapters, and outlines sources employed in the research.

Food security is a common term within the region, but its meaning is unclear. This chapter argues that the term is a means to demarcate the Gulf’s access to food from the rest of the region; it submits it as a form of biopolitics that rationalises circulation, access and consumption. It shows how food imports are central to economic growth and development and how this is managed by governments. It also argues that food security is a basis for political legitimacy and the identification of problem and solution is a performative act.

This chapter presents a neo-Aristotelian account of stakeholder deliberation, arguing that a range of virtues is needed to ensure that consensus among stakeholders with large power imbalances is based on trust and authentic deliberation rather than zero-sum competitive interactions. We identify three stylized phases of stakeholder deliberation that highlight how the need to cope with vulnerability drives interactions with other stakeholders that, in turn, foster the development of a range of deliberative virtues. In the first phase, involving the acknowledgment of dependence and vulnerability, the virtues of justice, mercy, and benevolence help mitigate stakeholder myopia by enabling weaker voices to be heard. In the second phase, involving the establishment of common ground, the virtue of benevolence plays a crucial role in overcoming differences in modes of discourse by creating trust and goodwill between stakeholders and preventing deliberative processes from devolving into merely self-interested posturing and negotiation. In the third phase, the virtues of justice, courage, honesty, and practical wisdom reduce the risk of decoupling, ensuring that deliberative processes promote the flourishing of diverse market actors.