Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. Terry M. Moe and William G. Howell. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Rise of the strongman, decline of democracy

The rise of populist and authoritarian leaders has prompted examination of how they navigate societal problems, in particular through centralising power within the executive office. Executive aggrandisement – when elected leaders legally dismantle or weaken checks and balances to concentrate more power within the executive branch – has increased globally, along with the crisis of democracy. Trajectory of Power examines these developments. It considers what has enabled a “strongman president” as Donald Trump builds on the cracks in the rattled administrative and political systems in the US.

As Bill Resh argued recently and Don Moynihan regularly discusses, rule of law and the administrative in the US have been under severe attack. Presidentialisation (ie, the increasing role of the executive in politics and policy processes) has reached a point where “it now threatens to substitute autocracy four our centuries-old system of self-government [in the US]” (12).

The origins of the administrative state

The book begins with an account of constitutionalism, the establishment and rise of the administrative state, and the norms and expectations about the president’s space for exercising executive power. This chapter discusses how the executive politics were set out both in legal terms and in normative ways. Chapter Two presents the “symmetric logic”: the executive needs the administrative state to implement policies and to provide order and welfare to society. At the same time, bureaucracy has been steadily expanding in size (eg, budget, personnel). Over time, the presidents downsized the ever-growing administrative state and centralised decision-making and policymaking authorities. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made the Executive Office of the President a central node in executive politics: the National Security Council created in 1947, the Domestic Council established in late 1970 by Nixon, Clinton’s National Economic Council in 1993, among others (57-59).

Trump’s 2025 “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” executive order demonstrated the rise of executive power over regulatory agencies

At the same time, the autonomy of regulatory agencies has been undermined. Systematically employed by Nixon and other presidents, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs have institutionalised its authority over autonomous agencies (62-64). Most recently, Trump’s 2025 “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” executive order demonstrated the rise of executive power over these agencies, which also has its origins in the backlash against the regulatory state.

When presidents reign supreme

In Chapter Three Howell and Moe trace the ideational and political origins of the asymmetric logic – “antagonism toward the administrative state and presidential power as the primary mean of retrenching the administrative state” (79), as the (Republican) presidents increasingly perceived the administrative state as the “domestic political enemy” (95-98). Building on this ideational account, Chapter Four reflects on the shape and nature of these attacks. It begins by pointing to the “long-standing opposition of free-market conservatives to regulation, spending, and taxes” and “the demand of social conservatives for the defense of their cultural beliefs and values on race, religion, gender, and the family” (113). Yet, how could the executive address its constituency’s concerns while wrestling with the administrative state? The unitary executive theory (UET) posits that “[P]residents reign supreme within the executive branch – and thus, in essence, over the entire administrative state – and they are endowed with exclusive, inherent authority to control everyone and everything within it” (122). The book shows that both Republican and Democrat presidents exploited the UET for unilateral acts: Clinton’s “bombing campaign in Kosovo” (126), the Bush administration’s “extralegal counterterrorism program” (127), and Obama’s “war actions” (130).

Chapter Five notifies us about the current UET extremists who are acting against the “bedrock values of democracy”, which small and gradual acts from both sides of the political spectrum have significantly eroded, given their commitment to deconstruct the “established system” on behalf of “the people”, which is unchecked by democracy and the rule of law (152). Echoing Anti-system Politics, the authors point to the socio-cultural, political, and economic origins of today’s extremism. Like many other jurisdictions, such extremism has risen and become more visible and “noisy”. This can be explained by extreme inequalities, lower economic growth and higher unemployment rates, the loss of ideational anchors that inform programmatic and normative agendas, and everyday failures of decapacitated administrative state.

Chapter Six concludes with an argument that “[T]he UET soon became conservative orthodoxy” (212-213), and such extremism has enabled Trump to ascend as a “strongman president” through incessant attacks on bureaucracy (e.g., cutting funding for research, pressure on bureaucrats, the DOGE experiment with Elon Musk), “weaponising” the judiciary against opponents and instrumentalising it for nepotism, overthrowing the 2020 election, among others.

Unfortunately, Trajectory of Power cautions us that the Congress, the judiciary, the administrative, and the “people” cannot alone be a veto player against the “strongman president”. For instance, the “people” are not knowledgeable about how the democratic system works (226); or Trump’s loyalist appointments can insulate bureaucracy from its natural and legal tendencies to pushback against presidents’ unilateral acts (238-241). The book ends with possible trajectories in a context where one cannot rely on any of these potential veto players: if the “strongman president” cannot deliver, the constituencies may develop alienation as their expectations are not satisfied; or short-term gains address anger and dissatisfaction but with diminishing returns in the future.

The accumulation regime

Trajectory of Power reveals the dark origins of executive power and how it has expanded in recent times. While it provides a detailed mix of a historical, actor-based, ideational, and institutional analyses, the book could have incorporated a broader outlook. Firstly, it spends too much ink on individuals that craft the ideational bases of the UET. The book refers to political, economic, and socio-cultural factors enabling the “strongman presidency”, but it misses a deeper debate about the elites, elite circulation, and elite coalitions.

The accumulation regime is cracking down on the administrative state. It does so by eroding further the remaining institutional, agential, ideational, and structural bases of transparency, rule of law, and accountability, the core pillars of democratic governance.

Current populist and authoritarian leaders come with their own elites. The kleptocratic, or oligarchic, elite circulation has become so “dirty” that “corrupt elites” are being replaced by equally “corrupt elites” with self-enrichment and insider trading tendencies. While the “new elite” is trying to replace the “old elite” and without an anchored ideological map, the new elite tries to hijack the administrative state and dismantle the rule of law. Such elite circulation clearly has a politico-economic basis. Replacing the older version of neoliberalism, the accumulation regime is cracking down on the administrative state. It does so by “politicising to depoliticise”, i.e., eroding further the remaining institutional, agential, ideational, and structural bases of transparency, rule of law, and accountability, the core pillars of democratic governance.

This points us to a significant gap in the book’s scholarly framework: bringing together political economy and public policy and administration scholarships. The partial analyses miss a broader picture where the political economic context sets the stage, policy and institutional arrangements define the “decor”, and actors’ interactions on that stage. A broader understanding of the interactions between politico-economic contexts and politics-administration nexus based on cross-fertilisation could have enabled us to empower veto players against the “strongman presidents”.

A must-read for whoever wishes to develop a sense of why and how the core of the executive has become a severe threat to the administrative state and democracy.

Finally, the book tends to treat Democrats as not having a broad impact on the trajectory of power. They do discuss Democrats’ mistakes, but if a system is flawed, and if Democrats are part of it, the book reads as a partisan cry against the allegedly powerful (Republican) president. Still, Howell and Moe guide us through the trajectory of power and notify us about the threats of the “strongman presidency”. The book is therefore a must-read for whoever wishes to develop a sense of why and how the core of the executive has become a severe threat to the administrative state and democracy.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Reading Wars. Don Herzog. LSE Press. 2026.

Resurging censorship

Late in the 2025 autumn semester at Texas A&M University, administrators decided to clamp down on curricula outside of their defined established norms. After months of relentless attacks by President Trump against transgender identity during his 2024 presidential campaign and signing of an Executive Order in The White House on Inauguration Day (20 January 2025) to proclaim the existence of two and only two genders – male and female, the emboldened conservative leadership at Texas A&M forced Martin Peterson – a professor of philosophy and ethics – to remove The Symposium by Plato (387 BCE) from his syllabus.

Why? In The Symposium the ancient Greek philosopher (who founded The Academy, the first higher learning institute in world history for the purpose of seeking truth) not only characterised homosexuality as a constituent phenomenon of humanity. He also declared “in times past our nature was not the same as it is now, but otherwise…there were three kinds of human being and not two as nowadays, male and female. No, there was also a third kind, a combination of both genders.” Rather than allow students to consider Plato and his postulation, the university banned the text and forbade the faculty from introducing any literature unsupportive of gender binarism.

Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge.

In a new and engaging monograph Reading Wars (2026), Don Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge. Herzog, professor of law at The University of Michigan, succeeds in portraying how, despite centuries of egalitarian progress, the battle over books, articles and pamphlets remains relevant. The book complements the new, expanding scholarship on the politics of knowledge control including Dangerous Ideas by Eric Berkowitz (2021), Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden (2022) and Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama (2025).

Suppressed abolitionist literature

From the initial chapter (“Stop The Presses!”), Herzog examines the plight of institutional critics and their battle to issue written dissent. By the 1830s, African chattel slaves, whom had been stripped of their identities, culture and language, had languished on plantations in The South for more than two-hundred years (1619). After the American Revolution (1775-1783), opponents of slavery became more vocal with each passing decade. In 1832, Elijah Lovejoy launched the St. Louis Observer and published articles critical of slavery and slaveholders – a less than welcome development in the slave state of Missouri. After a mob destroyed his office and threatened his life, he relocated to Illinois (a free state) and continued his diatribes against slave power in the Alton Observer.

As the US had been founded on a compromise to permit slavery, many citizens both north and south demanded either restrictions or the complete stifling of anti-slavery publications to preserve the union. This was a case of censorship for the supposed “greater good.” The intrepid Lovejoy refused to relent, and another angry mob appeared, and he would lose his life in a murderous assault for his ideals. Thirty years before the American Civil War (1861-1865), the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution (1791), which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” had begun to buckle under political division and intolerance (9-13).

Translating the Bible for the masses

In Chapter Two “Reading Bibles, and Burning Them,” Herzog compellingly highlights the contentious row between The Vatican and its dissenters in early 16th century England over whether the Bible ought to be translated for commoners to read and study. According to The Church, the masses, who remained largely illiterate, semi-literate and/or poorly educated, would likely misinterpret scripture and thus commit sins. William Tyndale disagreed. After completing a degree at Oxford, mastering seven languages and pursuing advanced studies at Cambridge, Tyndale translated The Bible from Hebrew and Greek in 1525, and copies of the banned translation pierced the borders of England and Europe from Antwerp – his selected city of exile. For his academic rebellion, the courts of The Holy Roman Empire under Charles V found Tyndale guilty of heresy for espousing views contrary to Catholic doctrine, and the Oxford scholar lived his final months in prison prior to being burned at the stake – a precursor to the fate of Elijah Lovejoy for the same devotion to free thought three hundred years later (33-40).

From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation.

After two subsequent, reinforcing chapters (“Censoring Protestants” and “Keeping Black People from Reading”) exploring how Protestants and Catholics in England and Europe and pro-slavery and anti-slavery coalitions in the US sparred to attain narrative supremacy, Chapter Five (“Spreading the Word(s): Britain”) and Chapter Six (“Spreading the Word(s): America”), detail the rise of the middle classes and their thrust to expand access to literature and democratise religious and political knowledge in the emerging public sphere.

No democracy without a free press

While the 1832 Reform Act enfranchised large segments of the English working class, a multitude of other formal and informal schools reduced illiteracy and ushered in an age of mass consumption of newspapers, magazines and books (108-111). In the US, both the proliferation of public schools and libraries and the noble effort by the Freedmen’s Bureau to empower former slaves through education (1865-1872) widened the concept of “We The People.” From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, however, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation (113-114, 129-135). In the final pages of the book, Herzog briefly surveys the religious right-wing agenda to ban books in counties across the US and offers insight into the threats to freedom of thought (138-141 and 153-162).

In his essay “Freedom and the Colleges” (May 1940), Cambridge philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) wrote:

As soon as a censorship is imposed upon the opinions which teachers may avow, education ceases to serve this purpose and tends to produce, instead of a nation of men [and women], a herd of fanatical bigots.

From that standpoint, Professor Peterson resigned from Texas A&M and joined the faculty of another college due to imposed censorship and the elimination of Women’s and Gender Studies programs at the university. In academia, the dual filing of federal lawsuits (again on specious grounds) and withholding of critical funds from top American universities by the Trump administration successfully forced many colleges to alter their curriculums and settle out-of-court. For the institutions of higher learning that capitulated, it constituted a victory for intellectual tyranny and a cravenly permitted abridgement of the First Amendment. For anyone seeking to review the contested space of the written word and its political implications from the Renaissance to the present day, Reading Wars delivers a lively account on a subject at the core of fundamental human rights and free societies.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Don Herzog will launch the book at an LSE event on Tuesday 9 June. Book now.

Read an article by Don Herzog about the book published on LSE Impact.

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The Climate Trial: Law and Justice on a Melting Planet. Noah Walker-Crawford. Duke University Press. 2026.

Who should take responsibility for climate change?

The material processes of climate change are well understood. Climate models demonstrate how greenhouse gases become trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to a warming effect on the planet’s surface. This contributes to a wide variety of phenomena including sea level rise, glacial re-treat, and deadly heat waves. Extensive scientific research demonstrates how climate change impacts people’s lives, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and generating unprecedented dangers. Atmospheric models illustrate the physical dynamics, but they do not say how we should deal with the consequences.

To make arguments about who should take responsibility for climate change, people link scientific representations of global warming to moral conceptions regarding how people, institutions, and environments should engage with one another. One such approach is the legal argument that climate change makes us all neighbours.

Neighbourliness as a moral framework

Neighbours are actors with mutual moral obligations, often arising out of physical or conceptual proximity. The term neighbourliness and the adjective neighbourly refer to ideas about how neighbours should rightfully treat one another. Neighbourliness is a familiar moral framework that resonates with people around the world. I distinguish between normative and analytical conceptions of neighbourliness: In a normative sense, appeals to neighbourly relations posit that people should act in a certain way toward one another.

Those are the claims I study in this book. I begin with neighbourliness in examining the moral dynamics of climate change from an anthropological perspective. The analytic of neighbourliness is a tool for studying moral relations across local and global scales. Here I study how moral relationships are constructed between humans, corporations, and other actors. This approach highlights a fundamental ambiguity at the heart of legal climate justice claims: They appeal simultaneously to individual and collective moral responsibility.

Luciano Lliuya’s lawyers expanded the legal conception of neighbourliness to encompass relations across the planet: as climate change has connected RWE and Lliuya, it has made them neighbours.

Saúl Luciano Lliuya’s case against RWE

A small-scale Quechua-speaking farmer in Peru, Saúl Luciano Lliuya took a lawsuit against German energy giant RWE over its contribution to climate change impacts in the Andes. The case drew on legal norms that people usually invoke to seek relief from neighbours for damage or potential harm to their property. In their arguments, Luciano Lliuya’s lawyers expanded the legal conception of neighbourliness to encompass relations across the planet: as climate change has connected RWE and Luciano Lliuya, it has made them neighbours.

Law codifies who counts as a neighbour and what constitutes good neighbourly behaviour. Strictly speaking, Luciano Lliuya’s claim concerned the relationship between two legal persons. It individualised climate change by framing it as a dispute between one human and one company. Yet, for Luciano Lliuya and his supporters, the lawsuit was also an attempt to set a precedent that would govern relations between all polluting corporations and all people affected by climate change.

This premise allows them to argue that fossil fuel companies, which have caused harm to others through their contribution to climate change, should take responsibility and provide redress to those harmed because they have acted as bad neighbours.

Beyond the legal framework, the lawsuit provided a platform for its proponents to make broader normative arguments about who should take responsibility for climate change. This issue concerns social relations among countless people who face the devastating impacts of climate change, numerous corporations, and governments that continue to promote a fossil fuel-based economic model, as well as the Earth itself. The normative appeal to neighbourliness addresses the question of how we should live together on our planet. This approach links an everyday understanding of neighbourliness, as relations between people who live close to one another, to the legal definition – legal persons shouldn’t interfere with each other’s property – and expands the concept to a global level.

Luciano Lliuya and his NGO backers broaden the moral basis of neighbourliness beyond property rights, arguing that neighbours should act in a positive way toward each other and should not cause each other harm. They make the universalising moral claim that climate change makes us all neighbours – all humans and corporations. This premise allows them to argue that fossil fuel companies, which have caused harm to others through their contribution to climate change, should take responsibility and provide redress to those harmed because they have acted as bad neighbours.

Towards a global neighbourhood

The normative conception of neighbourliness deployed in and around the lawsuit against RWE involves a fundamental ambiguity: It individualises climate change by framing it in terms of relations between specific actors, and it universalises those relations by claiming that we should all be good neighbours. It involves claims not only about how individuals should inter-act with each other but also about how social relations should be governed more broadly – in the global neighbourhood. The appeal to neighbourliness simultaneously individualises and collectivises the issue of climate change. This ambiguity lends the concept strength: The idea of neighbourly relations is easily understandable to anyone who has lived in a community, and it allows people to draw the imaginative link from the individual to the collective scale.

I examine how social relations are redefined in response to climate change, and how climate change reshapes moral relations across local and global scales.

The aim of this book is not to make a moral argument. Rather, I examine how social relations are redefined in response to climate change, and how climate change reshapes moral relations across local and global scales. I use the concept of neighbourliness to address these questions from an anthropological perspective. I do not argue that climate change makes us all neighbours; I explore how a neighbourliness perspective allows for a simultaneous appeal to individual and collective responsibility. I briefly outline anthropological discussions of climate change, highlighting how the neighbourliness analytic offers a new perspective.

This is an extract from the introduction to The Climate Trial: Law and Justice on a Melting Planet by Noah Walker-Crawford. Copyright Duke University Press 2026 © reprinted here by permission.

Noah Walker-Crawford will speak about the book at a hybrid LSE event on Monday 18 May at 6.30pm, The climate trial: law and justice on a melting planet. Book now.

Note: This extract gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The Sage Handbook of Decolonial Theory. Jairo I. Funez-Flores, Ana Carolina Diaz Beltran, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sandeep Bakshi, Agustin Lao-Montes and Flavia Rios (editors). Sage. 2025.

Decolonisation and deflection

“Decolonisation” has entrenched itself firmly on the psyche of academics and practitioners since Tuck and Yang’s seminal 2012 article, “Decolonization is not a Metaphor”. In the article, they argue that the “language of decolonization has been superficially adopted into education and other social sciences, supplanting prior ways of talking about social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches which decentre settler perspectives”. But Tuck and Yang’s call for re-centring decolonisation into its original context of resistance against violent oppression remains unheeded in the context of Eurocentric discourse on colonialism and its remnants across the world. As I have also argued, decolonisation stems from actual acts of violent resistance, or in the words of Frantz Fanon, “evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it.” There is a danger that the word can be used to deflect. Safe in academia, it can abstract the violent colonisation and oppression that continues today in the form of illegal wars, ethnic cleansing and lack of Indigenous reconciliation.

This handbook consciously attempts to de-link decolonial theory from its origins in the Frankfurt School and other conventional academic perspectives.

The Sage Handbook of Decolonial Theory, edited by Jairo I. Funez-Flores, Ana Carolina Diaz Beltran, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sandeep Bakshi, Agustin Lao-Montes and Flavia Rios, is an attempt to contradict this deflection. Its approach to this is to disrupt “conventional understandings of “society” by showing how entangled structures of power cannot be sufficiently examined by ignoring the global linkages established by racial capitalism, colonialism and heteropatriarchy.” It does so using a multidisciplinary – or, moving beyond academia, a multi-sectoral – approach to addressing issues of oppression, occupation, racism and capitalism. It simultaneously examines contemporary events that illustrate these issues and challenges existing decolonial theoretical frameworks.

A bottom-up perspective

Previous literature on decolonial theory has usually adopted the frameworks and methodologies of the Eurocentric (and often defended) Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, or other conventional academic perspectives. This handbook consciously attempts to de-link decolonial theory from these origins. It instead imagines new ways of situating decoloniality to address struggles of resistance against violence and oppression. In essence, it establishes a new form of scholarship that looks at decolonial practice from a bottom-up perspective of the subjugated subaltern rather than a top-down perspective of the Eurocentric oppressor.

This enormous volume – comprising 42 chapters written by scholars, practitioners and social activists from or of the Global South – brings into focus various geographies where colonialism, illegal occupation, racial capitalism, genocide, Indigenous practices among other social injustices, has been rife. Palestine, the Indigenous Peoples of the Abya Yala (North America), decolonial feminists, queer Muslims (yes, Muslims!) are just some of the subjects the Handbook spotlights. In so doing, it departs from Eurocentric knowledge, as the editors call on new ways to interpret the praxis between decolonial theory and decolonial practice. The co-editors and contributors themselves all bring a rich background of lived experience in decolonial struggles – Indigenous activism, Black antiracism, feminist activism, journalism, abolitionism, and Palestinian liberation, and of course, academia.

The book’s themes place decolonial thought and theory across three streams of thought and practice: the Palestinian struggle for liberation; Indigenous knowledge and resistance in North America (Abya Yala); and queer sexualities and liberation.

It does this by structuring its contributions by 46 contributors around five key themes; key debates in decolonial history; geopolitics and geographies, transdisciplinarity, feminisms, genders and sexuality and racial capitalism. The book’s themes place decolonial thought and theory across three streams of thought and practice: the Palestinian struggle for liberation; Indigenous knowledge and resistance in North America (Abya Yala); and queer sexualities and liberation. Black liberation and diasporic identity have the possibility of forming a fourth stream, while cutting across the first three. Each of these sections forms a sizable work in its own right.

A selective framework on decoloniality

These cases and contexts explored in the chapters raise some questions: what about other geographies of decolonial resistance? For instance, a chapter on Hindu Nationalism and Indigeneity introduces a lesser-known influence on decolonial thought, but what of the Dalit resistance (one of the contributors is Dalit and Queer), or the recent ethnic violence in the north-east Indian state of Manipur, that effortlessly fall under the decolonial struggles the book details? Similarly, a chapter on Decolonial Islamophobia Studies argues for the need for anti-Muslim racism or Islamophobia to be understood and studied from a decolonial lens, incorporating solidarity with others affected by power and coloniality. But is it also worthwhile to try to understand the growing hyper-religious sentiment within many Muslim nations that could lead to repressive societal changes such as denying women’s, trans and queer rights among Muslims? The latter issue of queer representation and positionality is raised exceptionally well in chapters on caste and South Asian Queer diaspora and Islam and Queer life, respectively.

Likewise, while the volume includes individual contributions on decolonial perceptions of slavery, climate, fascism and economic disempowerment, it could have been worthwhile to develop a framework of how decoloniality can use these as legitimate forms of liberation from the oppressive structures they represent. For instance, how can decolonial thinking draw on the history of transatlantic slavery to dismantle the structures of modern slavery now implicated in climate disasters, corporate power and rising authoritarianism? Is this even possible?  

Inviting further work on decoloniality

None of these observations supposes that the contributions in this volume should or can be exhaustive. Instead, the wide range of issues it covers are only a part of what must be a wider debate on decolonial thought. Beyond this volume, we must find other ways, subjects and lenses through which to examine the impacts of different forms of resistance. And rather than examine them in isolation from each other, we should explore how one connects to another. While the book reflects many of these practices of resistance in India, Jamaica, Mexico, and Ghana, it also creates room for future scholarly exploration of how decolonial theory feeds into praxis across various geographies, religions and cultures.

Arguably the book’s most important contribution is how forcefully and unapologetically it resists both the Eurocentric delegitimisation of whole communities and the limitations of decolonial theory as a paradigm.

But the editors also rightly recognise that “departing from the Eurocentric knowledge production does not suggest that the Global South has a privileged epistemic viewpoint”. They contend that “Questioning power is not a result of one’s geopolitical location of sociocultural identity, but of one’s praxis, understood here as collective action informed by thought and reflection”. While it is not possible to comment on each chapter of this expansive handbook, arguably the book’s most important contribution is how forcefully and unapologetically it resists both the Eurocentric delegitimisation of whole communities (the Indigenous peoples of the Abya Yala, Palestine or now, Iran) and the limitations of decolonial theory as a paradigm. Emphasising this dehumanisation and the struggles against it, the book is dedicated to the Palestinian Resistance, before and after the events of October 7^th 2023. In its framework and the contributions of individual chapters,

The Sage Handbook of Decolonial Theory is an urgent, important contribution to scholarship and other types of work that illuminates and drives struggle against oppression in old and new forms. It will be an excellent resource for understanding historical and contemporary struggles of liberation and resistance. It will appeal to scholars, practitioners, activists and anyone interested in furthering those struggles and participating in the real, and often challenging work, of decolonisation.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Why Immigration Policy Is Hard: And How to Make It Better. Alan Manning. Polity. 2026.

Advocates and opponents of immigration often cite statistics. Some note that half of all Nobel Prizes in the US were earned by migrants, or that migrants have low rates of integration. These statistics can be misleading, as expertly demonstrated in Alan Manning’s Why Immigration Policy is Hard. Drawing upon government data and natural and survey experiments, Manning follows others (such as Alexander Kustov and Hein de Haas) in noting the dysfunctional relationship between policy, immigration, and public perception. In particular, he argues that there is an “infernal cycle,” where governments attempt to control immigration, would-be migrants attempt to avoid such control, citizens perceive a loss of control, governments attempt to better control immigration, and so forth. This results in poor policy and polarised debates with misleading claims (6).

Misleading claims about immigration

Before presenting these claims, Manning provides data on immigration globally, noting that – largely due to inequality – 16 per cent of the world wished to migrate in 2023, and 80 per cent of that group to higher-income countries (45). He then focuses on immigration’s effect on receiving countries, picking apart common talking points. For example, while many Nobel laureates are migrants, the odds of any given migrant winning a Nobel Prize are around one in 20 million. If so, these winners aren’t evidence supporting migration in general, Manning argues; they are reason to admit certain types of migrants, like scientists (112). Manning also presents statistics made by those opposing immigration, such as the claim – made by those against Muslim immigrants – that Muslims on average in the UK live in areas that are 32 per cent Muslim, and so are overly segregated. This overlooks the fact that Christians on average live in areas that are 52 per cent Christian (179).  

Determining immigration’s effects requires looking at data on the ground. It also requires examining how other policies impact the effects of immigration.

Claims about labour can also be misleading: some think migrants fill labour shortages, doing jobs locals won’t do like picking strawberries, but there are not a fixed number of jobs to be filled. New job openings can crop up when migrants arrive, as they create demand for food and other necessities, which can lead to new labour shortages as a result (123). Rather than attempting to generalise, determining immigration’s effects requires looking at data on the ground. It also requires examining how other policies impact the effects of immigration. For example, building more housing impacts whether migrants increase housing prices (141) and generous welfare impacts whether migrants are net fiscal contributors (159).

Issues with immigration policies

Manning then addresses potential new policies. While he supports making borders more open (201), he rejects completely open borders in today’s unequal world, arguing that too many migrants would move to wealthy countries, leading to the policy collapsing from various harms (197). One potential harm arises when low-wage local citizens are paid lower salaries due to employers hiring migrants (198-199). Even if such employers could compensate citizens made worse off, Manning thinks there is no way of ensuring they do (199). Importantly, if migrants were eligible for welfare benefits, at least once they become citizens, eventually migrants’ contributions may no longer outweigh their costs, and the economic benefits of open borders would be less clear-cut (201).

Manning notes that international students on post-study work visas often end up with jobs not requiring BAs, such as social care. He proposes offering them work visas instead.

Even current migration policies, far short of open borders, have some downsides. Manning notes that international students on post-study work visas often end up with jobs not requiring BAs, such as social care (243). If many students are essentially paying for degrees to work in jobs not requiring them, he proposes offering them work visas instead. Then such migrants needn’t first study, and the visa fees would go directly to the government, accruing revenue for the general taxpayer and not just universities (243).    

Problematic immigration enforcement

Of course, even when there are good reasons to limit migration, it isn’t always justified. Sometimes trying to reduce immigration means immigration officers falsely accuse migrants of violating immigration laws (249). Governments must always account for risks of false accusations, which can be difficult. One reason it is difficult, Manning claims, is that immigration enforcement is under-resourced, and so it is hard to discern who is or is not in the country legally (319 and 326).

The book pays significant attention to refugees. Some refugee advocates claim border enforcement does not actually deter border-crossings, because refugees have little other choice. Manning presents evidence debunking this claim: it turns out, not surprisingly, that if a state erects an armed border, then fewer cross (271). Whether this is viewed as a positive outcome, of course, is another matter. Manning supports rights for refugees, but claims that preventing irregular migration can save lives, because fewer try to make unsafe border crossings (274-275). Here he overlooks how stopping migrants from crossing borders could lead to them dying in unsafe transit and home countries. Indeed, Manning himself earlier notes that migrants taking life-threatening journeys are increasing their life expectancy if staying in their home countries means having shorter lives (3). He does not raise this when discussing enforcement deterring migrants from unsafe journeys, where he only considers deaths during travel.

This oversight might be explained by Manning’s focus on immigration’s effects on the “size and mix” of the population of receiving countries (330 and 334). This focus feeds into his conclusion that higher-income countries should have an upper limit of one per cent per annum net migration (334). It is not clear to what extent he thinks countries should also focus on immigration policy’s effects on the size, mix, and indeed survival rates of those unable to migrate.

Absent morality and selective data

Relatedly, the book rarely mentions morality. While Manning notes that immigration enforcement involves violence (204-205), he does not explain how moral concerns over this violence should be weighed against other considerations. Given that even citizens opposing more migration often oppose harmful detention and deportation, it would have been helpful to understand how such considerations ought to be integrated into policy.

The book has another limitation: while Manning rightly criticises others for cherry-picking facts to fit narratives, he sometimes cherry-picks himself. For example, in defending more resources for immigration enforcement, he cites checks of UK delivery drivers who were 42 per cent unauthorised (325), and US agricultural workers who are 44 per cent unauthorised (326). These industries are atypical: immigration enforcement is much higher in other industries and countries. Manning might even be cherry-picking data when claiming others cherry-pick data: he cites a working paper finding that scholars analysing the impact of welfare programs on support for immigration are biased, picking methods which reach their desired conclusions (83). Yet this paper cites another – never appearing in the book – which found that bias was “barely predictive” and “explained little” of the diverging conclusions.

While the book primarily focuses on economic values, that may be Manning’s intention: as he notes throughout, he is open to broader discussions. Such openness is desperately needed

Other times citations are missing, as when claiming most refugees wish to eventually return home (262 and 267), which might not be true, and claiming governments should publish data on migrant crime because otherwise people “will think there’s something to hide” (190), without presenting evidence. He later suggests that two-year post-work visas for international students are “more generous than necessary” for finding jobs, a claim many graduates will question. He additionally makes unsubstantiated claims about others’ claims, as when stating that some advocating “for more generous refugee policies” think refugees’ economic benefits will be “automatic” (297).

The above limitation, however, is partly down to the many variables relevant for immigration: defending every claim is difficult. This is especially true when presenting a broad overview, which Why Immigration Policy is Hard does successfully. In doing so, the book also demonstrates challenges in determining which policies to implement given competing values. And while the book primarily focuses on economic values, that may be Manning’s intention: as he notes throughout, he is open to broader discussions. Such openness is desperately needed in today’s debates to create better informed and more beneficial immigration.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law: When Enemies Become Victims. Insa Lee Koch. Oxford University Press. 2026.

Insa Lee Koch will speak at a panel event at LSE, Who is Britain really saving in the fight against modern slavery? on Wednesday 6 May 2026. Find out more and register.

What does it mean when young people once cast as dangerous criminals – indeed, as enemies of the nation – are suddenly redefined as victims of exploitation, even as “modern slaves”? This question sits at the heart of Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law, an open-access book based on long-term ethnography. The book explores how the British state has come to “discover” victims in need of safeguarding in the figure of the exploited drugs runner It suggests why we need to remain critical of the language of slavery and exploitation against the backdrop of Britain’s history of transatlantic slavery and racial empire, and their ongoing afterlives.

Over the past decade, the UK has witnessed a profound transformation in how it understands certain forms of drug dealing, particularly those associated with so-called “county lines” networks. These networks, involving the distribution of drugs from urban centres to smaller towns and rural areas, have become the focus of intense political, legal, and media attention. Crucially, many of those involved at the lowest levels – often racialised and working-class teenage boys, and some of the most under-protected and over-criminalised populations under the government’s ”war on gangs” – are now increasingly framed not simply as offenders, but as victims of “criminal exploitation” and even as “modern slaves” under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The rise of “modern slavery” at home

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 marked a turning point in English law. Initially designed with the figure of the trafficked migrant in mind, it provided an unprecedent piece of legislation, one that made the fight against so-called modern slavery a national priority within Britain’s own borders. Crucially, the act offers not only prosecution tools for those accused of modern slavery offences but also a defence for those who have committed certain offences as a consequence of their exploitation. Today, the largest group of “modern slaves” identified through the government’s own mechanisms are British nationals, many of them young people involved in the regional heroin and crack cocaine networks that were labelled “county lines” in 2015.

The identification of modern slaves in the figure of the drugs runner has been widely framed as a progressive shift. But how does this narrative sit with those at its receiving end, and what forms of power does it obscure?

The identification of modern slaves in the figure of the drugs runner has been widely framed as a progressive shift across the political spectrum. Rather than punishing some of the most over-criminalised and racialised groups under the “war on gangs”, the state is now seen to recognise their vulnerability and extend protection. This shift is often celebrated as moral progress – evidence, even, of a post-racial Britain moving beyond its past. But how does this narrative sit with those at its receiving end, and what forms of power does it obscure?

Ethnography as an entry point

My starting point is the families and young men themselves, living in Britain’s urban post-industrial communities shaped by decades of welfare withdrawal, austerity, and structural abandonment. These are multicultural working-class areas, often with deep ties to Britain’s colonial past through histories of migration. It was in my long-term field site – first explored in my earlier work and published open access – that, in 2016, I encountered my first so-called “slave”: a fourteen-year-old boy identified by police as exploited and trafficked.

Others followed, all displaying similar patterns. Intrigued by this shift, and driven by their mothers’ desperate pleas to protect their children, I undertook a multi-sited research project that over five years took me from homes and streets to police stations, law enforcement offices, legal chambers, and Crown Courts – where modern slavery trials are now being heard. Throughout, my primary reference point remains the families and young men themselves, particularly their experiences of being failed by the state’s promises of victimhood and care. This perspective anchors the book’s central critique.

From criminals to slaves

A central argument of the book is that the move from “enemy” to “victim” does not mark a clean break from punitive logics. Rather, it reconfigures and deepens them in the name of safeguarding. This logic of victimhood is far from new. As I argue, the language of safeguarding carries echoes of colonial logics of saviourism, which have long cast racialised populations as in need of saving – for their own good and from their own kind. Today, this logic is revived in relation to Britain’s postcolonial, racialised working-class youth, framed as part of a colour-blind and even-handed tale of protecting the most vulnerable.

The fight against ‘modern slavery’ intensifies multi-agency data sharing, surveillance, and pre-emptive policing in racialised and working-class communities

My ethnography traces how this ideology of victimhood plays out in practice. Among frontline professionals, the fight against “modern slavery” intensifies multi-agency data sharing, surveillance, and pre-emptive policing in racialised and working-class communities. Professionals become involved in the intimate details of young people’s lives, interpreting friendship, care, and intimacy through criminal categories such as “mate crime”, “cuckooing”, and “exploitation”. At the same time, anti-trafficking frameworks enable the prosecution of drug dealers not just for drug offences, but for human trafficking – as “slave masters” – recasting them as the ultimate “enemy within”.

Glodi Wabelua & the figure of the “slave master”

In spring 2019, I followed what was the first prosecution of its kind in a jury-led trial: the trial of Wabelua, Alford, and Karamera for human trafficking. The prosecution argued that the three young men, aged 21 at the time of offending, had trafficked six children and one vulnerable adult for the purposes of drug distribution. None of the alleged child victims testified. Instead, the case relied heavily on phone data. In April 2019, Glodi Wabelua became the first person convicted by a jury under modern slavery legislation in this context.

Britain’s ‘discovery’ of modern slavery can be viewed as part of a broader process of state-making at a time of profound racial and economic crisis.

But how does this official narrative of justice align with the experiences of those convicted? In the book, I centre Glodi’s own account – one that was largely absent from the trial. Having come to the UK from Congo at the age of five and grown up on a London estate, his story complicates the stark division between victim and perpetrator assumed by the law. When we met in 2023 and began working together, he described a life shaped by the same structural conditions attributed to those labelled “victims”: poverty, exclusion, and drug debt. His account is one where he was only one step removed from the victims – holding the phone line as opposed to running the drugs.

Race, empire & slavery’s afterlives

Glodi’s conviction reveals not only the difficulty of applying anti-trafficking law where the line between victim and offender is often vanishingly thin. It also exposes the fragility of the claim that Britain is now “post-racial” – a claim advanced, for instance, by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities in 2021, in the wake of the global Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police’s murder of George Floyd in the US. Having reviewed evidence of racial disparity across different domains, the Commission argued that the UK is a model for other “white-majority countries”.

Seen in this context, Britain’s “discovery” of modern slavery can be viewed as part of a broader process of state-making at a time of profound racial and economic crisis. At the very moment the British state identifies slavery as a central problem to be tackled, it does so without reckoning with its own histories of transatlantic slavery or their enduring afterlives in the continued state racism that the young men and their families confront. Instead, slavery has been reconstructed as a contemporary wrong, projecting not only the figure of the “slave” but that of the “slave” master – the very antithesis of liberal freedom and the ultimate enemy within. It is this analytical move – and the politics of imperial denial it entails – that lies at the heart of the book.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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International Development Law: Rule of Law, Human Rights & Global Finance (Third Edition). Rumu Sarkar. Springer. 2025.

We are living through a time when international law, and development, are facing unprecedented challenges. These include unilateral decisions about trade, seemingly capricious tariffs, and military action without the imprimatur of the United Nations, especially in the Middle East. Rumu Sarkar’s revised edition of International Development Law: Rule of Law, Human Rights & Global Finance was motivated by emerging trends in globalisation, especially in the developing world. But by coincidence, more recent developments, including trade disputes and reductions in development assistance, make the subject even more compelling. The new version is therefore a timely offering, providing an innovative and comprehensive view of the legal aspects of international development.

Other authors can fall into the trap of pushing an ideological agenda, compromising their analysis; Sundhya Pahuja’s Decolonizing International Law: Development, Economic Growth and Universality is one such example of a more overtly political approach to the topic. Contrastingly, Sarkar seeks to examine objectively the strengths and weaknesses of economic development architecture. Further, with virtual slides and videos as teaching aids, the book brings 21^st century technology into legal instruction, helping students to navigate the complex principles that are crucial to understanding contemporary international development.

A shifting international order

The first part of the book covers a wide variety of relevant topics, including the core principles of international development (as they intersect with international law, impact global justice, the implementation of the rule of law in developing regions, and sustainable development law), the emergence of development’s legal principles, and human rights. The post-colonial era was characterised by competing ideologies revolving around the rights and responsibilities of both developed and developing states. The UN New International Economic Order (1974), for example, reflected the exuberance of nascent countries seeking an expeditious path to development. It featured preferential trade arrangements, debt relief and grants-based assistance for developing countries.

This ideological path to development was attractive at a time when the “Second World” of Socialism appeared to provide a quick pathway to prosperity. The reality was starkly different, however. The military prowess of the former Soviet Union could not conceal its inherent poverty and the unsustainability of its economic model. The eventual demise of the Soviet Union dampened the romance of the socialist economic model but did not necessarily lead to an embrace of Western-style capitalism.

No discussion of development law can be sufficient without an examination of human rights, as they form the basis for a moral argument for a right to development. Citing United Nations documents, including the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and post-war State practice, Sarkar argues convincingly that there are human rights underpinning the right to development. These include both individual rights, and economic rights, including social benefits like health and education. There is indeed an international consensus that, although some states may not formally recognise the right to development (the US has opposed it, in 1986 and 2024, for example), its pursuit benefits both developing and developed countries.

Without real commitment to build or strengthen domestic financial institutions, countries in debt distress will only continue the cycle of unsustainable debts and international bailouts.

Experience demonstrates that, for example, to attract the foreign investment necessary for prosperity, developing countries must adapt their economies to the needs of international commerce and finance. This requires the establishment of the rule of law and a business environment friendly towards the private sector and unfriendly to official corruption. Successful examples include Vietnam’s electronic manufacturing industry, Estonia’s digital infrastructure, and Brazil’s agricultural sector. This also means, however, that the West cannot impose mirror images of its institutions on developing world governments.

Development finance and debt injustice

Part Two of the book focuses on development finance, including debt and investment. Given the recent significant reduction in bilateral development assistance (OECD preliminary data shows a 23 per cent decline in Overseas Development Assistance in 2025, this topic is especially relevant. Developing countries often complain that they spend more on international debt payments than on health and education, with the implication being that the international lending system is unjust. Sarkar delves deeply into the international financial system to explain the legal and policy aspects of the current debt crisis, using past crises in Mexico and East Asia to show how such crises can be mitigated or otherwise avoided.

Sarkar proposes a new principle reconciling Western universalism and Western cultural relativism. Coined the “Janus Principle,” it requires a simultaneous view of a country’s past and future, along with a similar view of both its domestic needs and place in the broader world economy

Most significantly, she notes how the current “churning” of debt relief, particularly in Africa, fails to ultimately solve the debt problem. Without real commitment to build or strengthen domestic financial institutions, countries in debt distress will only continue the cycle of unsustainable debts and international bailouts. Tellingly, only about three of 34 rated African governments have “investment-grade debt”, wherein their debt is considered high-risk due to the absence of properly functioning governance institutions and the rule of law. Without the certainty that profits can be repatriated and contracts respected, foreign investors will continue to shy away from Africa.

How corruption robs citizens

The book refuses to shy away from one the most important obstacles to development: official corruption. Dwarfing the amount of overseas development assistance, billions are stolen or misappropriated annually by predatory governments and their allies. The result is underfunding of basic human needs, including health, education and housing. Skittish foreign investors avoid risky investments, except for resource extraction, which does not always promote economic development. 

While examining the limited role of the developing world in shaping the largely Western dominated paradigm of economic development, Sarkar proposes a new principle reconciling Western universalism and Western cultural relativism. Coined the “Janus Principle,” it requires a simultaneous view of a country’s past and future, along with a similar view of both its domestic needs and place in the broader world economy. Notably, the approach places emphasis on the need for developing economies to adjust to the needs of the current globalised economy. It also asks the Western World to adjust to the institutions and needs of the developing world.

An exceptional contribution to the discipline and a worthy textbook for any course in development

This new edition of International Development Law is an exceptional contribution to the discipline and a worthy textbook for any course in development. World events after the publication of this book, including military conflicts, trade disputes, and the diminution of development assistance, especially in Africa, make its principles ever more relevant.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: artaxerxes_photo on Shutterstock.

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The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade. Jake Subryan Richards. 2025.

On March 25, 2026, the United Nations declared the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity in world history. This followed a motion introduced by Ghana, acknowledging the continuing impact of the slave trade on Africa and its global legacy. The slave trade significantly fuelled the economic development of Europe and the Americas at Africa’s expense, in clear violation of John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which holds that the pursuit of individual happiness must not come at the cost of harm to others. The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade by Jake Subryan Richards arrives at a critical moment and offers an important intervention in the historiography of abolition and its aftermath.

Richards’ work forms part of a growing body of scholarship that re-centres liberated Africans within the history of abolition, alongside Ford and Parkinson’s Legislating Liberty: Liberated Africans and the Abolition Act, 1806–1824, as well as the edited volume by Anderson and Lovejoy, Liberated Africans and the Abolishing of the Slave Trade, 1807–1896. These works signal a broader historiographical shift toward examining the legal, social, and political lives of liberated Africans and their central role in shaping the end of the slave trade.

Reframing abolition and its aftermath

After more than three centuries of forced transportation of Africans across the Atlantic, the slave trade was formally abolished in the early 19th century. Plantation owners, however, received substantial compensation, which many reinvested in other economic ventures. Meanwhile, illegal slave trading persisted, prompting the deployment of naval squadrons tasked with intercepting slave ships. Many such vessels were captured and enslaved people “liberated.” Richards refers to these individuals as “liberated Africans.” Yet, an essential question remains: what did “freedom” actually mean for those who were liberated? The Bonds of Freedom provides compelling and unsettling answers.

The book examines the lives of Africans freed from intercepted slave ships after the 1807 abolition, demonstrating how ‘freedom’ often translated into new forms of coercion.

The book examines the lives of Africans freed from intercepted slave ships after the 1807 abolition, demonstrating how “freedom” often translated into new forms of coercion. Liberated Africans – men, women and children – were absorbed into controlled labour systems such as bonded labour, indentured servitude, and apprenticeships that could last over fourteen years. This outcome was hardly surprising given the powerful coalition opposed to abolition, comprising the plantation owners, financial institutions in London that underwrote slave voyages, and influential commercial interests in cities like Bristol, Glasgow, and Liverpool. Despite the efforts of anti-slavery patrols, slave trading continued into the late 19th century, particularly to Cuba and Brazil. Within this context, Richards argues that “liberation” frequently reproduced servitude through the actions of courts, state agents, and plantation economies. As he notes, the 1807 abolition “neither ended the slave trade nor guaranteed the security of liberated Africans” (10).

While the slave trade underdeveloped Africa, Richards further demonstrates that it simultaneously enriched Europe and the Americas. Enslaved labourers endured extreme exploitation – working up to twenty hours a day – and produced a significant share of global commodities, including on fifth of the world’s sugar in Cuba and half of the world’s coffee in Brazil (138). These examples reinforce the logic of racial capitalism and challenge Adam Smith’s assertion that slavery was an inefficient system for enslavers.

“Freedom” as reconstituted bondage

Under systems of apprenticeship and bonded labour, liberated Africans continued to endure severe exploitation, particularly on plantations in Brazil, Cuba, and across the Caribbean. They were alienated from their families, denied freedom of movement, inadequately fed, excluded from citizenship, and subjected to physical and sexual abuse, thus denied the rights later enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Couples were often separated, and punishment could be brutal – sometimes resulting in miscarriage or death (100-101). Their labour remained indispensable, contributing to major infrastructural projects, including prisons, railways, and agricultural enterprises. Richards observes, “… throughout the Atlantic world, the liberated Africans built the state” (109).

Individual cases illustrate these abuses vividly. A woman named Adenon reported severe beatings, noting that another woman was “beaten so badly that her clothing looked like a sieve” (109). On the slave ship Santa Cruz, captives were flogged and several died (160). Richards also recounts the story of Librada, who, despite being “rescued,” was forced into compulsory labour by Spanish colonial authorities and separated from her young child of seven years old (23). Such cases reveal a troubling paradox: those presented as liberators often became new agents of oppression. It is therefore unsurprising that these “liberated Africans” were sometimes described as “recaptured Africans,” (6) compelled to struggle for the real freedom.

Liberated Africans were not passive victims. They actively resisted and negotiated their circumstances through a variety of strategies.

Legal institutions such as the Vice Admiralty Courts (operating under prize law) and the Courts of Mixed Commission (under treaty law) failed to guarantee genuine freedom. Instead, they often facilitated the transformation of illegally trafficked Africans into legally controlled labourers. Enslavers exploited legal ambiguities to legitimise their claims, while the law remained silent on the long-term status of liberated Africans after apprenticeship – particularly regarding residency, property rights, and the fate of their children (201). In some cases, employers re-enslaved apprentices through fraudulent means, including falsified death certificates – a practice Richards terms the “mortuary economy” (74).

Resistance and solidarity

Despite these oppressive conditions, liberated Africans were not passive victims. They actively resisted and negotiated their circumstances through a variety of strategies. They demanded reforms to apprenticeship systems and ultimately sought full freedom, including adequate food, housing, rest days, and wages. Their capacity for collective action was strengthened by common linguistic or regional identities, and shared experiences which resulted to shipmate bonds during the Middle Passage; what social psychologists might describe as in-group solidarity. As a result, they organised petitions, riots, insurrections, mutual aid systems, and legal challenges to defend their rights and support one another.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its extensive use of diverse archival sources spanning South Africa, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Cuba and the United States.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its extensive use of diverse archival sources spanning South Africa, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Cuba and the United States. This breadth of evidence underscores its originality and scholarly rigor. Detailed accounts of slave ships such as Emila, Amila, Nancy, Amedie, Progreso, Santa Cruz, and Ysavel further enrich the narrative, offering case studies that challenge the notion of genuine emancipation.

Although Richards notes that apprentices were trained in trades such as tanning, cobbling, bookbinding, and agriculture – while women were largely assigned domestic labour – the book does not fully explore the outcomes of this “training”. Such outcomes are significant, especially given the arguments that many Africans already possessed sophisticated skills prior to enslavement, including expertise in iron working, agriculture, medicine, construction, and long-distance trade. Indeed, some scholars argue that enslaved Africans transferred valuable knowledge to the Americas, such as wet rice cultivation techniques in South Carolina and Georgia. This perspective complicates the narrative of “training” apprentices and highlights Africans as active agents in their history.

Overall, The Bonds of Freedom makes an important contribution to legal and Atlantic history by tracing the evolution and implications of numerous legal instruments, including the Slave Trade Act (1794), Foreign Slave Trade Act (1806), Abolition Act (1807), Slavery Abolition Act (1833), and subsequent 19th-century legislation. Crucially, Richards demonstrates how these laws functioned not simply as tools of emancipation but also as mechanisms for regulating and, at times, perpetuating coerced labour. The book will appeal to scholars of history, law, international relations, sociology, political science and development studies as well as for general readers interested in human rights and global justice.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Studio Portrait of Woman Wearing Head Scarf, Shawl, and Plaid Skirt, Brazil (1861–62)
artist unknown. Open access courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, via The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2018.

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Judging. Ross Cranston. Oxford University Press. 2025.

Open justice and the art of judgecraft 

“Open justice” is a fundamental principle of our justice system. It captures the idea that justice should not only be done but should also be seen to be done. It is a vital element of the rule of law and a safeguard to democracy, and is about far more than simply ensuring the public can access court proceedings (though that is important). Open justice also demands a transparent justice system: the public should know what this system is doing, how it is doing it, and why.

If the UK Government’s controversial proposal to limit jury trials comes to pass, it will be even more important that we understand the influences and pressures on a judge, often either misunderstood or simply out of sight.

At the centre of the social imaginary surrounding the justice system is the judge: a powerful figure who presides over the courtroom with (hopefully) a firm but fair hand. And if the UK Government’s controversial proposal to limit jury trials comes to pass, it will be even more important that we understand the influences and pressures on a judge, which are often either misunderstood or simply out of sight. Court observation and reading judgments only take us so far. To really understand the judge, we need to examine the art of judgecraft.

In Judging, former judge of the Queen’s (now King’s) Bench Division Sir Ross Cranston helps us do just that. He defines judgecraft as, “the art of judging, the successful employment of practical skills associated with good judging […] It is judgecraft which ensures the success of the judge in court, the efficient processing of their caseload, the making of good decisions, and the advancement of their reputation” (195). There is a practical side to judgecraft, but there is also a value-laden side.

The judge’s three values

The first half of the book is dedicated to the consideration of three values – independence, impartiality, and integrity – that are fundamental to a judge’s work. While these values, “may have taken a ‘taken for granted’ quality in particular situations” (195), Cranston’s comparative approach reveals that the enactment of these values is contested territory.

For example, in his discussion of judicial integrity he contrasts the mandatory (for federal judges) codes of the United States with the Guide to Judicial Conduct in England and Wales. What might explain the disparity? Cranston points to the difference in cultural expectations, including the fact that state judges are elected in the United States, but appointed following recommendation of the Judicial Appointments Commission in the United Kingdom. This illustrates how a contingency of different social norms and practices shapes how a judge enacts what should be universal values. As he points out, the political nature of elections means that judges in the US have been shown to “tailor their judgments, especially in criminal sentencing and appeals, to improve their electoral prospects, adopting a harsher approach to criminal defendants” (326).

It is not just social factors, but also the judge that introduces contingency. In his chapter concerning impartiality, Cranston considers the test for apparent bias. When accused of bias and asked to recuse herself (ie step down from hearing a case), a judge must ask herself whether a “fair-minded and informed” observer would consider her to be biased. If yes, she must recuse herself; if not, she will continue to hear the case unless an appellate court overturns the decision. The problem is that this is a legal fiction – there is no such person. Moreover, this fictional character is supposed to not share the viewpoint of the judge but, at the same time, it is the judge who decides on a case-by-case basis “what the fair-minded and informed observer would think about any given situation” (80).

This fallibility of this mechanism was perfectly captured in a case in 2020. In what she thought was the privacy of her chambers, Mrs Justice Judd criticised a mother in family proceedings. Unknowingly, she was still connected (via her laptop) to a remote link through which all the parties could hear her. The judge declined to recuse herself; the Court of Appeal found that she ought to have done (though, if their reference to the decision being “finely balanced” means anything, the Court of Appeal may also have struggled with the question of bias). 

What if the judge being asked to recuse himself doesn’t recognise something that makes him biased against a party or their position?

All this feeds into concerns about unconscious bias. What if the judge being asked to recuse himself doesn’t recognise something that makes him biased against a party or their position? The problem is not unique to judges, but the stakes are higher given their responsibility. Cranston points to research in England which asked lawyers about racial bias from the bench. Respondents reported that “unconscious bias plays a major role in the justice system”. In one example from the Magistrates’ Court, a “black British youth of no previous convictions […] [was] convicted on obscure reasoning’ by ‘two old posh white ladies” (see page 13 of the report).

A jury will also have both conscious and unconscious bias. But it comprises 12 randomly selected people who must defend their judgement to each other. If jury trials are indeed reduced, we will be left with a system wherein one person need only persuade themselves.

The judge’s practice

Values are all well and good, but the public and parties don’t see them. What they do see is a judge’s management of a case, and in the second half of the book Cranston seeks to explain how a judge goes about this task. Here is where Cranston makes his most profound contribution to understanding the justice system and, thereby, open justice itself. He painstakingly considers how a good judge should, and a bad judge fails to, manage a case. From dealing with litigants-in-person in a way that’s fair to all parties (represented and unrepresented), to the delivery of ex-tempore (oral) judgments, Cranston sets out the concerns a judge needs to keep in mind.

In essence, Cranston explains what it is like to be a judge. This is the hidden side of the justice system – hidden not because of a conspiracy but because judges are often constrained in what they can say, and too busy to say what they are unconstrained from saying. Cranston is not the first judge to try to unveil the work of judging. Lord Bingham considered the position of judge as juror in chapter one of The Business of Judging (2000); Richard A. Posner conceived of the majority of American judges as legal pragmatists; and Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC has written two books about the work of a criminal judge. What makes Cranston’s contribution unique is that he combines the internal with the practical, and he can do so effectively because, being retired, he is unconstrained by the usual limits on a judge’s speech.

Taking a deep dive into the art of judgecraft, Cranston reveals the true face of the judge: a human being like anybody els

Indeed, the constraints on a judge’s speech are stark. Cranston points to two examples: one from the United States, where a judge’s ruling was overturned on appeal in part because he had discussed the case with reporters, and one from South Africa, where Chief Justice Mogoeng “expressed a view taken to be contrary to the government’s official policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict” (136). In England and Wales, judges are not strictly bound by silence, but the guidance is clear that they must keep their silence on a wide range of matters. As a very recent case shows, even the “liking” of a LinkedIn post may be enough to spark allegations of misconduct.

In taking a deep dive into the art of judgecraft, Cranston reveals the true face of the judge: a human being like anybody else. Far from being “enemies of the people”, they are the people. It’s easy to forget this, in part because so much of a judge’s work and internal life is invisible. By placing this in public view, Cranston has opened up the justice system. Whether we like what we see is for us to decide.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Read an interview with Ross Cranston from the January 2026 edition of LSE Research for the World magazine, What makes a good judge – and why it matters now.

Main image: Stained glass Roundel with Justice (ca.1510), artist unknown. Open access courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1983.

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Nomadic Indigenous Peoples and the Law: Self-Determination, Land Rights and Gender Justice in India. Indrani Sigamany. Routledge. 2026.

Law and historical injustice

Considering the layered history of development-induced displacement in India from the colonial times to today, one can situate Indigenous groups (Adivasis) firmly on the other side of development. Although people belong to tribe now comprise less than eight per cent of the population, they make up 40 to 50 per cent of the communities who are displaced. Among these are mobile and nomadic indigenous communities who are more vulnerable, as their mobility patterns are at odds with the governmentality of the state. Conservation policies (like the Forest Act of 1927 and the Forest Conservation Act of 1980) are most often at odds with the rights of persons inhabiting these forests, and other factors come into play within tribal groups, such as gender.

The book departs from other works that centre formal legal recognition by focusing on mobile and nomadic communities, who are often overlooked.

It is these nuances that Indrani Sigamany’s book Nomadic Indigenous Peoples and the Law try to unravel. Her work is situated between three main scholarly conversations: first, global Indigenous land rights and law (see Anghie, 2023; Mutua and Anghie, 2000); forest law and Adivasi dispossession in India (see Gadgil and Guha, 1992; Galanter, 1968); and feminist political ecology (see Agarwal, 1992; Xaxa, 2004). The book departs from other works that centre formal legal recognition by focusing on mobile and nomadic communities, who are often overlooked. Sigamany employs a critical theory approach and an Indigenous-positionality approach, with a deep engagement with the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006. The book argues that advancing substantive rights is crucial, but access to justice is mediated by other factors like administrative injustice.  

Chapter one undertakes an evolution of forest-based legislation from colonial to post independence times focusing on how these acts transformed common forest lands into state property and criminalised shifting cultivation practices. These legislative actions have had a devastating impact on indigenous communities. Sigamany points to the inconsistency of, and contradiction between, the growing international legal instruments on Indigenous rights and land laws (for example, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People 2007), and the national experience of tribal and indigenous communities (54). The author argues that although the FRA was enacted to undo the “historical injustice,” its implementation is fraught with administrative barriers, legal incompatibilities, and political tensions, which ultimately limit the transformative potential of the act. Thus, she questions whether the promise of justice is being realised through FRA, and whether administrative justice delivers for indigenous communities. Chapter one traces the historical trajectory of forest-based laws, and the proceeding chapters probe how these manifest in the experiences of the mobile communities. 

Is all land god’s land? 

Mobile indigenous peoples, who are usually pastoralists move with their herds through specific grazing corridors, and these corridors may not agree with the boundaries of the nation-state. Maldhari herders of Mera district, Gujarat (“Mal” means livestock and “Dhari” means owner) migrated through Afghanistan in the past, but after independence, they were limited to the borders of India and thus, their usufruct rights (the right to use and enjoy communal lands for the grazing of the herds) shrank. Being nomadic, they do not own any land; they have a saying that “all land is god’s land”, rejecting ideas of individual property ownership.  

Maldharis conventionally had a communal way of living. But these traditional practices were nearly eliminated with the coming of the dairy development initiative, the White Revolution in 1970. Their grazing lands also shrank due to sale of gauchar (pastoral) lands by the government to the private individuals and industries and violations by private individuals. All these losses of lands also had a gendered consequence, as it increased the workload of Maldhari women. For example, women now have the new task to gather fodder in addition to cooking and laundry. Women also lost the control of marketing the milk produce because of the encroaching dairy cooperative, thus losing their economic independence. Sigamany then looks at the Dhangar pastoralists of Ahmednagar, Maharashtra and illuminates how the economic foundations of their pastoral life were altered because of erosion of gauchar lands integration into capitalist markets.  

Traditional gairan (grazing fields) were re-allocated to private individuals and industries by the government, giving meagre compensation to those who were displaced.

Traditional gairan (grazing fields) were re-allocated to private individuals and industries by the government, giving meagre compensation to those who were displaced. The Government also declared their grazing field an Indian conservation area. These case studies expose India’s neoliberal capitalist system, in which the needs of the economic elite supersede those of tribal communities left marginalised and unprotected by the state (84). Only some take a legal route to assert their land rights, with many barriers to accessing the required knowledge and resources. Maldharis favoured political action, but Dhangars were introduced to the necessary legislation by an NGO (85), and the book reveals the key role of NGO support in seeking redress.  

Nomadic women and struggles for self-determination

Chapter three problematises the gender within Indigenous communities, arguing that tribal women face double discrimination of being tribal and female within an oppressive patriarchal culture. Whenever there is a threat to forest-based livelihood and loss of lands, it is experienced more acutely by women, as their productive and reproductive roles are closely interlinked with forest lands. Based on the case studies of Raika camel herders and settled Adivasi Forest community of Bhasla of southern Rajasthan (87), where active struggles for their lands were led by women, Sigamany unpacks the dichotomy of dual representation of women as victims and of women in control of their lives.

Chapter four attempts to broaden the frame by bringing in self-determination of tribal communities. By taking the examples of people who make a living from producing tendu patta (a type of cigarette) and their struggle against displacement, Sigamany shows how legislation is used to access justice. She showcases, how through NGO support and mobilisation, communities tried and succeeded to gain control over the tendu trade and transitioned from labourers to owners via a cooperative model. Similarly, in Amba village, communities were threatened with displacement when a survey order was passed which could change the status of and prohibit them from inhabiting it. The process became important as Gram Sabha (the general governing body of Gram Panchayat, a basic governing institution in Indian villages) participation was undermined and free prior and informed consent (FPIC) was not taken. The author terms this an example of “administrative injustice”. The lack of commitment by the administration has harmed forest communities and has ultimately complicated the use of legal mechanisms for forest rights (137). 

Can rights-based frameworks coexist with market-led growth?

Sigamany’s book is an excellent critical reflection on the debates surrounding mobile indigenous peoples and their land rights, illuminating the contested nature of justice and how it is negotiated at ground level, either politically or legally. However, there are some areas which merit reflection. For example, can rights-based frameworks coexist with market-led growth? There are also questions that arise from the tensions between collective rights of the indigenous communities and individuality of women. For example, while collective land titles are seen as an emancipatory response, they can also reproduce internal and gendered hierarchies regarding participation in decision making and control over resources. 

Nevertheless, her scholarship stimulates us to broaden our horizon regarding access to justice via rights-based frameworks and most importantly, it rejects the binary framing of laws as being either futile or emancipatory. As she argues, substantive rights like FRA are a welcome tool to secure legal redress for land violations, but it must be strengthened with other factors like administrative justice. This book will appeal to scholars and students of gender studies, human rights law and Indigenous studies, and it invites further research on the intersection of justice, mobility, and conservation governance.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: PradeepGaurs on Shutterstock.

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