This chapter asks the question: Where did Black individuals' desire for community commitment come from? The answer this, I draw on numerous primary and secondary sources starting in the Reconstruction era to show where Black voters' expectations of those representing them came from and how they shifted over time. The latter part of the chapter focuses on the Civil Rights Movement out of which many Black voters received the right to engage in politics. I contend that these new rights and those who helped acquire them for the Black community created the lens through which most Black people see effective leadership today, and solidified the desire for representatives willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of the racial group's progress.

Following a brief historical overview of the birth of the organised movement, Chapter 1 introduces literary figures and texts promoted by antivivisection periodicals such as the Zoophilist, the Home Chronicler, and the Animals Guardian. Adopting a literary-critical approach offers a fresh perspective on the movement’s association pamphlets and periodicals which have, thus far, largely been examined as historical documents. Poems, stories, and ‘humane words’ from notable writers were sourced and deployed to shape a common antivivisectionist identity, articulate the movement’s ideology, and mobilise activists. Analysis of antivivisection poems by Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Buchanan is complemented by attention to the framing and reception of these works in antivivisection publications and the wider press.

How, given the murder of those demanding a more representative political system at Peterloo in 1819, did more Britons, at home and in the colonies, get to vote by 1885?

When Britain accepted an IMF loan in 1976 few thought that it would usher in a new political economy that would endure to the present, so how did it?

How did an English state torn apart by sectarian conflict, civil war and a revolution in the late seventeenth century become the most powerful in the world by 1819?

A wide range of Tokyoites took to the streets in protest in the early decades of the twentieth century, revealing competing understandings of public space and different visions of political life. Public spaces such as Ueno Park and Hibiya Park were originally planned by the Meiji government to promote state-driven nation building and imperial modernity. But citizens increasingly made their own claims on these spaces. Hibiya Park, used for official ceremonies and celebrations, also became the city’s preeminent site for unofficial mass political gatherings – a place where citizens exercised their freedom to assemble and to express criticisms of the government. In an era of popular violence, inaugurated by the Hibiya riot of 1905, citizens protested and wrought physical destruction on the city in expressions of economic discontent and in support of democracy, the emperor, and the Japanese empire.

Offering two case studies – the economic transformations of Sohar and Duqm – this chapter grounds the book’s argument about Oman’s global labour market in material cases of spatial transformation and the integration into global value chains through which both commodities and labour circulate. The chapter argues that millennial citizen expectations take shape in these developments, from the interaction of ostensible outcomes of economic globalisation, neoliberalism, and government responsibilities of governing hydrocarbon windfalls. Citizen reactions emerge from their perceived right to, or exclusion from, these returns. The chapter further substantiates two points through these cases. First, both neoliberal reform and oil wealth explicitly or implicitly make promises to populations about an improved economic life, which, when unrealised, results in disenfranchisement and discontent. Second, capital needs labour and pursues supplies from the global labour market not only because it is cost effective but deliberately because it is both flexible and controllable. It seeks to avert potential labour disruption and secure seamless operations. Together, these findings show the ways Omani labour organises and the power of labour through the threat of its resistance.

The chapter re-examines the notorious Cade scenes of 2 Henry VI in light of widespread political protests across the globe. The bloody chaos of Cade’s failed popular uprising contains within it an important flash – or counter-memory – for the political imagination. First, the popular movement creates a break with the oppressive social order by revealing the systematic silencing and oppression of the commons. It makes the invisible visible. Second, the mass movement makes a positive demand for justice that differentiates the people from the State. Examining the rebels’ “Edenic egalitarianism”, the chapter draws on the recent work of Chris Fitter, Lorna Hutson, and Annabel Patterson in reassessing Shakespeare’s representation of popular politics. However, the chapter critiques the critical tendency to concentrate on what is “useful” or “effective” at the level of plot. It instead turns to imagination as the key to thinking Shakespeare’s popular politics. The force of the “people” is not located in one figure, be it Cade or Salisbury, but is dispersed across the drama. The spirit of the “in-common”, in all its absurdity and impossibility, lives on as a form of negative, or spectral, thinking and dramaturgy. The audience is the ultimate carrier and agent of this political imagination.

Movement lawyers deploy law strategically to change culture, systems, and power. We work with community organizers to weave litigation, education, media, policy, and protest into coordinated campaigns, and together we transcend the limitations of what can be achieved in the courts. Guided by values of dignity, collectivity, and creativity, this unique theory of change calls on the lawyer to be innovative and use law strategically as one of many tools to build the power of marginalized people to win change. Thus, we see legal design as a versatile and valuable tactic that has the potential to build power when combined with community organizing. To make this case, we share our experiences deploying legal design in collaboration with organized communities in Miami and how we used this tool to increase the dignity of the communities we work with, create political space to advance progressive demands, and allow for cross-pollination across disciplines and sectors to arrive at strategic and long-term solutions. We also share some of our wisdom and reflections on the challenges and limitations of using legal design to build people power and contextualize this tool among a range of others.

The final chapter of this book teases out the empirical and theoretical threads of respectability politics in the French Muslim context. It stresses the ways in which this form of politics operates as a reactive, embodied, gendered, racialized, and class-layered tactic of community advancement, resulting in both conservative and emancipatory outcomes for minority citizens. It further reflects on the relative failure of respectability politics, which falls short of its promise to French Muslims to fully exercise their citizenship. This argument goes beyond the French case; although the problematic relationship between religion and citizenship is often deemed “typically French,” respectability politics seems to be pervasive in Muslim-minority contexts and accompanies the reconfiguration of Islamic traditions into ethical projects of self-fashioning. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the importance of breaking away from the insularity of Islamic scholarship and opening up a transatlantic conversation about the role of ethics and religion in minority politics. The ambition of this chapter, then, is to look beyond the Muslim case and draw parallels with other minority citizens, such as Black elites in the US and European Jews. It examines how these groups have resorted to inconspicuous religiosity and social upliftment to advance their conditions, as well as how such stories reflect the intricate workings of power in situations of subjection.

Chapter 7 concludes the Jordanian case study by analyzing the theory’s expectations for how strategic interactions around delegation and blame influence repression, protest, and accountability in authoritarian political systems. Original protest data indicates that the monarchy permits hundreds of protests each year and that security forces repress only a tiny fraction of these events. Instead, repression is highly targeted at those individuals who cross the regime’s redlines by publicly blaming and criticizing the king. The chapter explains how this approach to repression complicates anti-royal coordination, even among those opposition figures who personally blame the monarchy for Jordan’s ills. The chapter also illustrates how the monarchy provides limited accountability by removing prime ministers and cabinet ministers when the public becomes visibly dissatisfied with the government’s performance.

Chapter 1 builds from the example of the Arab Spring uprisings to illustrate the importance of blame for authoritarian politics and its relevance to the stability of ruling monarchies. The chapter summarizes the book’s argument about how power sharing affects attributions under autocracy and how autocrats strategically try to limit their exposure to blame by delegating decision-making powers to other political elites. It then describes why autocratic monarchs are better positioned than other autocrats to avoid blame by sharing power. The chapter also discusses the book’s contributions to scholarship on authoritarianism, including how popular politics affect regime stability, when autocrats are more or less likely to share power, why autocratic monarchies have been so stable, and how power sharing and popular politics interact in authoritarian settings. The chapter ends with an outline of the remainder of the book.

Chapter 6 continues the Jordan case study by providing an important assessment of the theory’s expectations over time. Drawing on archival documents, internet search data, elite interviews, and secondary sources, the chapter shows that Jordan’s kings have shared power more credibly when they have more reasons to be concerned about popular discontent. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that Jordanians have responded to these changes as the theory expects, becoming more likely to blame the king for their grievances when the monarchy controls the decision-making process more directly, and less likely to blame the king when he delegates more credibly to other political elites. Not only do these findings demonstrate the theory’s utility for explaining changes in authoritarian decision-making over time, but they also help to account for alternative explanations to the argument, such as the possibility that the Jordanian monarchy benefits from traditional legitimacy that protects its reputation from popular anger.

Chapter 2 provides a detailed account of the book’s theoretical arguments. It first expands on why blame is important for dictators, explaining how even the most powerful autocrats must be worried about a revolutionary uprising if enough citizens come to the conclusion that they are personally responsible for the country’s problems. Next, it outlines a theoretical framework of power sharing and blame in authoritarian regimes, defining the actors, their interests, and strategic interactions around blame and delegation of decision-making responsibilities. As autocrats become more concerned about threats from the public, they should be more incentivized to share power to shift blame, but they must also take into account the risks of delegating to elites who may try to challenge them from within the regime. The chapter then explains why monarchs are advantaged in using delegation to avoid blame, arguing that monarchs can share power more safely with other elites and that such delegation is more likely to align with the public’s expectations about how responsibility should be attributed for governance. The chapter concludes by outlining the key implications that will be tested in the subsequent empirical chapters.

Chapter 3 provides evidence from cross-national statistical analysis as well as two case studies that are consistent with the major implications of the theory. First, it draws on internet search data, survey data, and short case studies of Russia and Morocco to demonstrate that power-sharing arrangements affect how the public attributes blame under autocracy. The case studies also suggest that autocrats delegate strategically in response to shifting threats to their rule. Second, the chapter uses cross-national data from Varieties of Democracy to test my expectations about how strategic interactions around delegation and blame influence broader governance outcomes in autocracy. The analysis indicates that autocrats who share power more are less vulnerable to popular discontent, which is consistent with their ability to shift blame more effectively. The analysis also shows that autocrats who share power more are less likely to use repression and more likely to provide a measure of accountability by sacking ministers when the public becomes dissatisfied. These findings indicate that the book’s arguments provide insights into a range of modern authoritarian regimes around the world.