This chapter examines the crystallization of sociopolitical processes in Rwanda and Kivu during the 1950s, which would undergird political processes into the 1990s and later. Against the backdrop of post-Second World War developments, it is the second chapter of the book to focus on the scheme for “transplanting” Rwandan labor, with the foundation of the Mission d’Immigration des Banyarwanda (MIB) in 1948. Rather than focusing on migrants motivations, it shifts attention to the repercussions of this scheme for the local Hunde community in what was then the Belgian Congo.

After the Second World War, the colonial administration grew increasingly uneasy about the implications of the mass immigration to Kivu. Three key factors drove their concern: intensified land pressure due to colonial policies, elite conflicts exacerbated by these policies, and concerns about the legal status of Rwandan immigrants. These three key factors still define much of the contemporary conflicts in North Kivu and are intimately tied to vernacular “autochthony” discourses.

While the chapter challenges the notions of exclusively antagonistic interactions between “migrants” and “host communities”, it emphasizes that colonial interventions often came with devastating consequences, as Hunde saw themselves being turned into minorities on their own land. Belgian interventions contributed to the politicization of identity and belonging in the struggle for land access and authority. However, the precursors of current-day conflicts were not only the result of this immigration but also of a colonial system of land management that was never fundamentally challenged in the postcolonial period.

This chapter completes the act of setting the stage for the rest of the book by stressing the significance of the relationship between legitimacy and law, at the national level as well as at the international level. Legitimacy and law do not have a simple and straightforward relationship—far from it. Highlighting four features of this relationship helps shed light on the complexity of their relationship and serves as a preview of some of the issues that will be addressed throughout the book. These four features are the paradoxical character of the relationship between legitimacy and law; the unavoidable, yet at times, problematic role of values in the legitimacy–law nexus; the need for legitimacy and law to not be entirely captive of the power on which they depend; and the nature of these features for legitimacy and law at the international level.

Chapter 4 addresses four types of issues. First, I delve into the ambiguous status of the idea of legitimacy in the discourse on politics. Legitimacy is both omnipresent and an object of suspicion. On the one hand, it is one of the terms most frequently used in conversations on politics. On the other hand, especially in the academic disciplines that deal with the study of politics, the notion of political legitimacy has its detractors. There is intellectual nervousness about embracing it and relying on it. Second, comparing natural sciences and social sciences, I explore some of the features of what a theory is (description, explanation and predictability) and what this means for the theory of social phenomena that factors in political legitimacy. Third, I examine two different approaches of politics: politics mainly as power, and politics mainly as community. Fourth, I highlight the centrality of legitimacy for a theory of politics as community.

In October 1947, just more than two years after the Japanese Empire officially surrendered to the Allies and the most destructive conflict in human history finally ended, the veteran American statesman Henry L. Stimson published an article in Foreign Affairs.1 As the flagship journal of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, it was a natural forum for someone such as Stimson, a former secretary of state and (twice) secretary of war with over four decades of experience at the highest levels of American government, to share some of their ideas.2 In his piece, entitled “The Challenge to Americans,” Stimson outlined what he felt were the opportunities and struggles the United States faced in the aftermath of World War II.3 He opened with a declaration: Americans faced “a challenging opportunity, perhaps the greatest ever offered to a single nation. It is nothing less than a chance to use our full strength for the peace and freedom of the world.”

This chapter examines Henry Stimson’s career and his rise to the pinnacle of the US government until his resignation as secretary of state in March 1933. It analyzes his background, the formation of his political views, and the creation of his foreign policy ideas as a committed member of the Republican Party. Specifically, it explores his tortuous relationship with the American empire and how he became an unbridled internationalist.

This chapter presents hypothesis testing which is used to evaluate whether the available data provide sufficient evidence to support a certain hypothesis. The main idea is to play devil's advocate and assume a null hypothesis, which contradicts our hypothesis of interest. We explain how to use parametric modeling to implement this idea, and define the p-value. We prove that thresholding the p-value controls the probability of false positives. In addition, we define the power of a test, which quantifies the test's ability to identify positive findings. Next, we show how to perform hypothesis testing without a parametric model, focusing on the permutation test. Then, we discuss multiple testing, a setting where many tests are performed simultaneously. Finally, we provide three reasons why hypothesis testing should not be used as the only stamp of approval for scientific discoveries. First, hypothesis testing does not necessarily identify causal effects; it is complementary to causal inference. Second, small p-values do not imply practical significance. Third, relying on p-values to validate findings produces a strong incentive to cherry-pick results.

This chapter presents material on statistics, from the basic principles of the classification of data to normal distribution. We go on to discuss types of the null hypothesis, types of error and different methods of statistical analysis depending on the type of data set presented.

Chapter 6 details and tests our theory of IO exit by applying it to the predictors of IO suspensions. IO member states use suspension to punish states that have violated IO commitments and to incentivize domestic institutional change. We argue that suspension is not an automatic punishment for violations but instead is influenced by factors related to bargaining and institutional constraints: Violator states that are more powerful, have material resources, and have alliance relationships with regional powers are less likely to be suspended while IOs. Empirically, we analyze 101 IO suspensions from 1939 to 2022 across all IOs and states, and then focus our multivariate analyses on suspensions for political backsliding. This is because we show that most suspensions occur for human rights violations and incursions on democracy commitments (like coups d’état); and narrowing the scope allows us to control for the kinds of violations that prompt suspension. Our quantitative analysis shows that IO membership suspension is imposed against some but not all violators – and that this is partly because powerful states are able to insulate themselves from IO pressures, avoiding punishment for violations that less powerful states get suspended for. IO institutional constraints including their democratic density also affect the likelihood of suspension for political backsliding. Suspension can act as a multilateral diplomatic sanction but power and politics matter.

Chapter 3 outlines and tests our theory of IO exit by applying it to the predictors of IO withdrawal. We argue that many dissatisfied states use the process of withdrawal to broker deals for institutional change in the IO. Many withdrawals are driven by preference divergence from other member states or declining power. Using our IO Exit dataset, we analyze 387 IO withdrawals from 1913 to 2022 across 534 IOs and 198 states. In categorizing the reasons for state withdrawals, we show that two-thirds of IO withdrawals are motivated by the desire to negotiate change rather than by issues that reflect populism, nationalism, or capitulation toward international cooperation. States also use the threat of withdrawal, which supports the notion that exit is a negotiating process with multiple steps rather than a final or singular act. Withdrawal is usually not permanent; half of the time, states return to the IOs they left. States also likely consider costs a priori and avoid withdrawal if the costs are projected to be too high. This prevents many withdrawals from happening in the first place. We do not find consistent support for alternative arguments that backlash against globalization, encroachment from authoritative IOs, nationalism/populism, or legal rules are robust drivers of withdrawal.

This chapter explains the basics of Nazi understanding of securing and legitimizing power, dynamics of the “normative/prerogative state” where applicable/useful; clarifies the institutional framework relevant for mass violence in the Reich and occupied regions (military/civil administrations, non-German collaborators/auxiliaries), the development of institutions and their interaction during war, the role of cultural-political perceptions of space (”Heimat,” “the East”) and “normalcy” for participation in violence against civilians

Money and finance make up a socioeconomic infrastructure in which trust is integral. The account form of money consists of distinct value and information components. The separate transmission of transaction information has enabled the expansion of trust in money across space. While most financial infrastructures store and transfer value, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a critical infrastructure for infrastructures that transfers information about value as financial messages between banks and infrastructures internationally. The SWIFT financial messaging infrastructure is embedded in the organization of the same name, which is a cooperative, co-owned by member banks. SWIFT’s role as a community of practice, and features of shared infrastructure ownership, exclusivity, and cooperative governance, make it a club for banks. This club is a powerful means of engendering trust among competitor banks, allowing them to exercise joint strategic agency to maintain oligopolistic dominance. SWIFT’s predominance is tested by geopolitical and technological forces. This chapter analyses changes in response to mainly techno-organizational challenges.

In the political economy of finance, the infrastructure of the material environment has tended to be underexamined, with only cursory attention given to how new technologies are enabled by planning decisions and built into the fabric of working spaces. Yet the production of certain infrastructure systems enables some financial centers to have a competitive advantage over others. This chapter responds to this omission by exploring how the City of London, a core hub for financial services, prioritized the remaking of its infrastructure as a way to rebuild and extend its power. The general coverage of infrastructure in respect to the City remains sparse – a troubling analytical gap when one considers that infrastructure is always an enduring question for government and private sector agents. The chapter probes the political economy of infrastructural dynamics from the 1980s to the present, a prominent period in which the City grappled with manifold commercial, technological, regulatory, and cultural changes. The argument uncovers how different groups of professional players – major firms, local government agencies, property owners, architects, and developers – interacted in ways which produced a significant transformation in the infrastructural experience of the City.

This chapter argues that the resurgence of strong religion has forced liberal states to find new answers to its effects on women’s rights. It discusses two examples. The first is recognition of the jurisdiction of private Muslim Sharia Tribunals to decide Muslim divorces and family disputes, and the second is intervention in Jewish divorce cases in which Jewish religious women find themselves anchored to their marriages due to their husbands’ refusal to grant them a religious divorce. The chapter offers a novel classification of religion–state relations, which sheds new light on the different solutions offered to such dilemmas and their compatibility with women’s rights and with religious freedom. It employs a comparative perspective on religion–state relations to distinguish between three approaches toward religion – nationalization, authorization, and privatization. It assesses the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches and claims that, contrary to liberal inclinations, measured state intervention that enables the liberal state to acknowledge the importance of religious belief in people’s lives, while at the same time protecting the rights of all its citizens, is required.

Utilizing the Foucauldian concept of power, this chapter shows how the power of religion and culture has created and perpetuated the hegemony of patriarchy throughout the centuries, including in liberal states. It claims that liberal theory lacks an adequate theory of power and neglects the dynamics of power and control in the private sphere. Liberalism disregards the institutions, practices, and norms of religion and culture, as a socially and politically significant site of power. This severely curtails the ability of liberal states to ensure that the exercise of power and authority over the individual is justified and that the rights of the individual are safeguarded. After a general theoretical and historical discussion, the chapter discusses the history of the relationship between religion and the state in the USA and the critique of early American feminists on the power of patriarchal religion, and claims that despite the constitutional separation between religion and state in the USA, patriarchal religion continues to influence the law directly and indirectly and constitutes a significant force preserving the hegemony of patriarchy, as the 2022 Dobbs decision demonstrates.