Chapter Four explores the politics of sectarianism and statecraft within the context of the triangular relationship among the Ottoman state, the Safavid state, and the Qizilbash communities situated between them. The chapter examines how the Ottoman state and its Qizilbash subjects devised diverse strategies to navigate their religious sensitivities, sociopolitical realities, and fiscal imperatives. A new set of questions is introduced to challenge the prevailing notion that the relationship between the “Sunni Ottoman” state and its “non-Sunni Qizilbash” subjects was inherently irreconcilable and characterized by continuous persecution of these supposedly powerless, defenseless religious nonconformists. It reveals the existence of a range of policies and approaches adopted by the Ottoman state, from providing financial support to establishing quid pro quo arrangements, from accommodating Qizilbash subjects to resorting to surveillance and heavy-handed suppression and persecution of the very same populations. The chapter emphasizes that the Ottoman Qizilbash, as significant powerholders during this period, exerted their influence not only through practices of conversion and reconversion but also through negotiation, migration, intervention, and at times rebellion.

The chronicle of European social democracy is often told from the perspective of the party leader. If the party triumphs at the polls, it is surely because the leader is a visionary. If, on the other hand, the party loses elections, weak leaders are held responsible for that misfortune. Clearly, leadership matters but perhaps not in the top-down manner it used to. Drawing on the literature on political leadership and the Europeanisation of public policy, this chapter argues that the collaborative approach to statecraft deployed by the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa in the period 2015–2019 paved the way for a period of political stability and electoral victory of the Socialist Party. Using the method of process-tracing to analyse official documents, parliamentary debates, and media reports, the chapter shows that collaborative statecraft enabled Costa to get four budgets approved, to complete a four-year mandate while leading a minority government, and to win the elections of 2019. The chapter also shows that the abandonment of collaborative statecraft in the period 2019–2023 resulted in greater political uncertainty and contributed to the socialists’ defeat at the 2024 elections.

Some common themes emerge from these lessons about strategy and bureaucracy. The statesman and strategist also need wisdom to take the long view, prudence to discern what is practical, persistence and fortitude in implementation, courage to overcome groupthink and pride and bureaucratic resistance, temperance and humility to toil in unglamorous details. Above all the strategist must have a passion to pursue justice and peace. Statesmen and stateswomen need wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. If that is true, such timeless principles do not apply only to the individual policymaker. They apply to the nation we serve. American foreign policy should be characterized by wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice; our role in the world should serve those principles. Our grand strategy should take the long view, be practical and aware of our limits yet also courageous and visionary, fearless and uncompromising in the face of obstacles. Above all it must aim at justice – which means it must serve American interests, but it must do so with an awareness of how our interests are entwined with others.

To examine prerogative is to reflect on how constitutions recast and reshape the story of their own creation. I argue that the term ‘prerogative’ specifies the rudimentary command function that underpins all constitutional order - or, more precisely, what remains of that command function once institutions of law and government have developed and stabilised around it. So understood, the central question becomes how best to understand the place of prerogative within the order of rules that the constitution provides. One answer presupposes the existence of a ‘sovereign prerogative’, that is, an ‘original’ authority inherent to government that is prior to and in some sense superior to law. I show how this model fails analytically and normatively. Another answer constructs prerogative as a set of general executive powers that are derived, enumerated and limited (‘constitutional prerogative’). This second model brings conflicting sources of normative authority into conceptual alignment. While this configuration does much to prohibit recourse to open-ended discretion - so reducing the likelihood of arbitrariness and disruption that tends to result from its exercise - it does not in itself prevent the rise of a prerogative disposition among ruling elites and their client groups.

The chapters assembled in this part turn to the key question of how the exercise of power was subject to a broad array of performative practices, in places as diverse as the administration of the state, public spectacles, agricultural production, and literature. Taco Terpstra kicks off with the performative dimension of statecraft. Due to their substantiated degree of structured hierarchies, standardized procedures, and the ability to employ officials with specific assignments, the imperial administrations of Rome and Han China capture, in exemplary fashion, the design of premodern statehood. Yet both governments looked rather different. While the Chinese relied on a large apparatus of officials who were appointed and paid by the state, Rome governed via a notoriously narrow pool of magistrates whose bureaucratic powers quintessentially built on the support of countless unsalaried local elites. Terpstra’s discussion of these differences departs from an analysis of how administrative rank and agency were expressed through clothing and other symbols of power. Prima facie minor aspects of the grand scheme of empire, the study of Sima Biao’s (third century CE) Treatise on Carriages and Robes, and On the Magistracies of the Roman State by John the Lydian (sixth century CE) offer exciting insight into the ways in which state power was conceived of and articulated throughout the empire. The chapter then segues into the question of state formation and the emergence of bureaucratic structures. Terpstra discloses how, in China, the thrust toward performance-based appointments and promotions preconditioned the rise of a professional bureaucratic corps, whereas the Romans, he argues, actively discouraged such a development. Both dispositions had eminent consequences for the longue durée of state power.

I introduce the topic, theme, central argument of the study, and its setting in Gulf petro-monarchies. I discuss the relevant scholarly literature, especially as it concerns ways in which religion (and specifically, Islam) has been used by political actors to advance particular interests. I provide a detailed elaboration of the argument and its various parts, as well as the method of analysis and justification for the choice of cases. I then discuss the context and cases in greater detail, with attention to key features of the historical development of the petro-monarchies from their pre-oil contact with the British imperial power, the arrival of oil companies, the importation of labor, the definition of borders and emergence of “modern” states. I illustrate noteworthy structural peculiarities of each of the four states. Finally, I outline the architecture of the manuscript, with an overview of each chapter.

This chapter deals with all manner of state-derived prohibitions. Ancient states prohibited a broad variety of behaviours, threatening punishment for those who would transgress boundaries. The logic of prohibition was wide-ranging: from the marking of spaces, objects and officials as somehow distinct from the rest of ‘society’, leading factions within ancient states sought to preserve and protect their individual prerogatives. They also sought to reinforce their claims to leadership by incentivizing subjects to settle their disputes in state-sanctioned venues. The evidence for such prohibitions is extensive, but did they add up to something that we might legitimately call ‘social control’? Did ancient states succeed at inducing subject populations to accept their claims to rule? If so, how? This chapter suggests that the logic of prohibition was a site of contestation for both statecraft and subject-craft.

Chapter 12 concludes the Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law by drawing out a set of fundamental comparisons, both differences and similarities, from the volume’s previous chapters, in addition to offering further reflections on the field of ‘ancient law’ itself. The chapter opens by comparing and contrasting the Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law to earlier historiography, underscoring its unique contribution to existing scholarship: developed through collaborative work and drawing upon numerous specialist traditions and technical expertise, across a pan-Eurasian research field. The chapter then moves on to a broader discussion of ‘Mapping the Ancient Legal Cosmos’ and ‘Ordering Ancient Associations’, pinpointing the specific connections between ethics, law and statecraft that can be observed across the ancient source material. The chapter concludes by suggesting several answers to a provocative, but fundamental, question: What is ‘Ancient’ about ‘Ancient Law’?.

Diplomacy is a political performing art that informs and determines the decisions of other states and peoples. It shapes their perceptions and calculations, so that they do what we want them to do, because they come to see that doing so is in their own best interests. Sometimes diplomacy rearranges their appraisal of their strategic circumstances–and, when needed, the circumstances themselves. Ultimately, it aims to influence their policies and behavior through measures short of war. Diplomacy succeeds best when it embraces humility, and respects and preserves the dignity of those to whom it is applied. Most of what diplomats do is unseen, and it is relatively inexpensive. Diplomacy’s greatest triumphs tend to be preventing bad things from happening, but gaining credit for something that was avoided is difficult.

The state concept is one of the oldest in the study of politics. It features prominently in the analysis of the founders of modern social science, Max Weber and Karl Marx, the former focusing especially on its inner workings (i.e., the state as organization), the latter on its relation to society. Since the early days of social science research on the state, the focus in Comparative Politics has been on both its role in economic development and in nation-building, resulting in the emergence of two research traditions, one centred on statecraft, the other on statehood. Much of the state literature has assumed the presence of an already cohesive political community, the nation-state. State formation in Europe and Asia was the outcome of the dissolution of empires. The emerging states in the early 20th century were all grounded in specific national identities. African states were also born as empires vanished, but they were not formed around nationalities. The colonial powers had assembled multiple pre-agrarian societies into territories with the purpose of conquest and development. Thus, when Africans gained independence, they had to accept a statehood that was not aligned to nationhood. Because the African state-nation is still a project in the making, the exercise of power relies heavily on such means as co-optation and mutual transactions. African leaders must balance the conflicting pressures from tribe and the larger political community, which limits the capacity of the instruments the state to conduct their business. Instead, it encourages modes of governance that are either rivalrous or monopolistic. Lasting political settlements tend to be transactional compromises involving power-sharing, rather than institutional arrangements that facilitate the conduct of state business. Success in the pursuit of such compacts often involves the use of informal institutions that help overcome the rigidity of formal rules.