Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000. Avner Greif, Joel Mokyr, and Guido Tabellini. Princeton University Press. 2026.

Europe and China’s economic histories

Why do the roots of the modern world lie in Europe, not China? This question is at the heart of a new book by three eminent economists and economic historians (Avner Greif, Joel Mokyr, and Guido Tabbellini), one of whom (Mokyr) was a co-recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on innovation-led growth. The book takes its cue from Kenneth Pomeranz’s 2000 book The Great Divergence, though the authors immediately suggest alternative terms such as “the great reversal” to describe Europe overtaking China from a less advantageous position, or “the great bifurcation” as a more accurate description of how the politics, economics, and culture of Europe and China snowballed in two such different directions.

The authors rightly push for a deeper explanation as to why Europe turned into the laboratory of the world while China did not.

The mystery is why Imperial China – which for much of the past millennium was the more academically and technologically advanced civilisation – was overtaken by Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries following the industrial revolution. The authors situate their thesis within the existing literature, arguing that previous answers simply push the question back a level. The most straightforward response – “the industrial revolution happened in Europe, not China” – is no answer at all, and the authors rightly push for a deeper explanation as to why Europe turned into the laboratory of the world while China did not.

Access to energy resources, whilst initially a more promising avenue, proves just as fruitless an answer; both Europe and China possess coal deposits, after all, and coal existed under the ground in Europe for centuries before it was harnessed to power industrial technology. The question is therefore what caused Europe to develop and adopt new technologies that would ultimately raise living standards far above the historical norm.

Religion and kinship networks

The authors’ answer, perhaps surprisingly, boils down to Christ versus Confucius. In other words, different forms of social organisation that found their bases in theology would focus the orientation of economic life. In Europe, this was the corporation. In the authors’ telling, the Catholic Church, as the original universalist organisation which was in principle open to all, played a prominent role as the model for later corporations. It was the corporation that allowed entry to newcomers not bound by ties of family or personal loyalty. This widespread dispersal of human and financial capital, in turn, allowed for the uptake of new innovations at scale. Moreover, the Catholic Church’s interdictions against incest and support for nuclear families led to a more atomised society in which strangers had to learn to cooperate.

In China, meanwhile, economic life was organised by kinship networks at the local level, providing access to employment and security for much of the population. Clans provided the social basis of trust necessary for markets to function, and even acted as tax collectors for the state, whose power in practice often did not extend far beyond the imperial centre. The influence of the kinship network was reinforced by a Confucian culture emphasising deference to one’s elders, and by rigorous civil service exams which rewarded knowledge of ancient texts rather than critical thinking. Taken together, there was little incentive for young Chinese to question authority, learn from others, and engage in innovative thinking, when their social and economic life depended on not doing so. 

The book is an impressive work written by three academics at the top of their field. While little of what is offered is new, it presents a remarkable synthesis of previous research by the authors as well as that of numerous scholars in the field of economic history. Indeed, it is difficult to do justice to the vast breadth of scholarship on offer, as the book enters into dialogue with myriad voices to digest the economic, social and political evolution of Eurasia over the past millennium. It is an example of interdisciplinary scholarship at its finest, using work across different fields to create a coherent and contextualised portrait of multi-regional development across time. Much work in the social sciences is conducted within academic siloes, so bringing these voices together is itself refreshing and important. It is also highly readable and, perhaps surprisingly for a book with multiple authors, the book speaks with one voice, barring a few moments of repetition.

What caused the industrial revolution?

The authors take pains to stress that there is nothing inherently superior about Europe which led to the rise of the corporation and hence to the industrial revolution; that the conditions mapped out are necessary, rather than sufficient, for industrialisation to occur. The origins of the Great Divergence turn out to be not so great; more a form of cultural dead-reckoning, where slight differences between two civilisations with broadly similar social parameters at the end of the first millennium accumulated to produce astonishing differences by the end of the second.

What does the reversion of China to an autocracy with strict censorship and weak rule of law mean for the future stability of Chinese economic growth? Will the political integration of Europe act as a barrier or a spur to further growth and innovation

This focus on contingency is admirable and humbling. There is, however, a risk in such broad analysis. If the developments recounted here merely created the possibility for the industrial revolution, but did not cause it directly, then what did? One answer, which the authors do not put forward, is that given the right material and intellectual conditions and the right constellation of economic and social forces pushing in the same direction, it was not a question of “if” but “when”. But again, we are pushed back a level, as this leaves us wondering not why it happened, but why it happened when it did.

The book is tantalising as the central question inevitably leads one’s mind to numerous branch questions which the authors either do not address, or do touch on but do not answer. Some questions are historical: the role of slavery probably merits a larger place in the narrative than the authors credit, and the portrait of the Catholic Church as a progressive institution is hardly uncontroversial. Other questions, to which there is no certain answer, concern the future of geopolitics. Despite the anti-corruption drives of Xi Jinping, what does the reversion of China to an autocracy with strict censorship and weak rule of law – especially with a lax attitude towards property rights – mean for the future stability of Chinese economic growth? Will the political integration of Europe act as a barrier or a spur to further growth and innovation? It is, perhaps, correct that the authors leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions.

One path, not two, to prosperity

But the book’s title is, arguably, inaccurate. The economic rise of modern China occurred for many reasons, including the Chinese diaspora acting as a bridge between China and the rest of the world (specifically foreign capital investment), which the authors identify as central. However, the industrialisation of China could only occur because of the prior industrialisation of Europe and those parts of the world colonised by it, notably the United States. The Chinese miracle of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was therefore historically dependent on the rise of Europe as an industrial power in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Chinese miracle of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was therefore historically dependent on the rise of Europe as an industrial power in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This is to make the point that, in world historical terms, there is only one path to prosperity.  That the first stage of this path took the form of multiple historical processes working themselves out across several centuries in Medieval and early modern Europe should not lead to charges of Eurocentrism or an outlook of European exceptionalism. It should make us acutely aware of how historically contingent our current mode of living is: it suggests no single individual, nation, institution, resource or idea can claim a monopoly on the process of human development, much less on where that process will take us.

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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Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox. Naila Kabeer. LSE Press. 2024.

Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox by Naila Kabeer examines positive social change in Bangladesh over the past 50 years, in particular the factors that enabled significant and rapid gains for women in areas like health, education and employment within a deeply patriarchal society.

Read an interview with the author about Bangladesh’s development and what drove its gains in gender equality.

The Troubling State of India’s Democracy. Dinsha Mistree, Šumit Ganguly, and Larry Diamond (eds.). University of Michigan Press. 2024.

In The Troubling State of India’s Democracy, editors Dinsha Mistree, Šumit Ganguly and Larry Diamond assemble work by leading scholars assessing the conditions of India’s democracy across three dimensions: politics, the state and society.

The book provides a thorough analysis of ideological, institutional and social shifts towards nationalist authoritarianism under Modi but is not without hope for India’s future, wrote Abidullah Baba in his review.

Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asians and Cultural Belonging in Britain. Churnjeet Mahn, Rohit K. Dasgupta and DJ Ritu. Hurst & Company, London. 2025.

Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asians and Cultural Belonging in Britain by Churnjeet Mahn, Rohit K. Dasgupta and DJ Ritu documents the experiences and activism of South Asian queer communities in Britain.

Filling a crucial gap in diasporic queer historiography, the book’s compelling narrative foregrounds “Desi Queer” community-building and resistance against the backdrop of racialised and homophobic state policies, wrote Kanchan Panday in her review of the book. 

Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India. Mukulika Banerjee. Oxford University Press. 2022.

Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India by Mukulika Banerjee explores how agrarian life in rural India creates values of citizenship and active political engagement that are essential for the cultivation of democracy.

The book provides a rich and nuanced perspective on the complexities of politics and citizenship in rural India, according to Kishor K. Podh’s review.

Political Economy of Social Change and Development in Nepal. Jeevan R. Sharma. Bloomsbury. 2021.

Political Economy of Social Change and Development in Nepal by Jeevan R. Sharma explores how Nepal’s political economy has been transformed since the 1950s.

Combining Nepal’s development journey and social change, this book offers a fresh and standout contribution that will be an important guide for social scientists seeking to understand Nepal, wrote Sushav Niraula in his review.

Development Challenges of Pakistan: Constraints and Choices. Jamil Nasir. Palgrave Macmillan. 2025.

Development Challenges in Pakistan: Constraints and Choices by Jamil Nasir explores why Pakistan struggles with sustaining economic growth compared to nations in Southeast Asia. Combining economic, political and sociological analysis, Nasir identifies inequality, weak governance and untapped human capital as key factors.

Though dense in style and leaving some areas underexamined, this well-researched book puts forward valuable policy reforms for inclusive, sustainable development in Pakistan, wrote Sajjad Ahmed in his review.

A Woman’s Job: Making Middle Lives in New India. Asiya Islam. Cambridge University Press. 2024.

In this excerpt from A Woman’s Job: Making Middle Lives in New India, Asiya Islam examines the lives of educated young women working in precarious jobs in Delhi’s service sector.

The book’s rich ethnography explores how these women navigate work, home life, gender norms and class dynamics amidst socio-economic transformation and globalisation.

Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict. Sumantra Bose. Yale University Press. 2021.

In Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, Sumantra Bose analyses the conflict in Kashmir from its origins to the present, considering the influence of colonial legacies, the rise of Hindu Nationalism and global interventions.

Bose makes an urgent, compelling contribution to the understanding of one of South Asia’s most critical political issues, wrote Ajit Kumar in his review.

Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh. Kasia Paprocki. Cornell University Press. 2021.

Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh by Kasia Paprocki explores climate change adaptation in the Khulna region of Bangladesh, a place extremely vulnerable to the threats posed by the climate crisis.

This study deserves wide acclaim for its refreshing take on how the ideologies surrounding climate change and climate victims today reproduce and intensify rural dispossession, wrote Nikhil Deb in his review.

Waiting for Dignity: Legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan. Florian Weigand. Columbia University Press 2022.

In Waiting for Dignity: Legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan, Florian Weigand examines the legitimacy of state power and other authorities in Afghanistan.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Afghans, the book makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of politics and power in Afghanistan and to the broader field of conflict resolution studies, according to Hossein Mousavi.

Note: This post 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 Migration Question: Politics, Economics and the Failure of Border Security. Leila Simona Talani and Matilde Rosina. Oxford University Press and Hurst Publishers. 2026.

To begin with, what prompted you and your co-author Leila Simona Talani to write The Migration Question?

Migration is one of today’s most polarising and controversial topics. It has the power to define elections, referenda and international relations across states. We see on one hand domestic publics asking for more restrictions on immigration, but on the other hand, people risking their lives to migrate to safety.

This is the backdrop that pushed us to write the book. In it, we consider the big questions of migration, such as why do people migrate, and can deterrence policies work? We also try to debunk some of the myths around the topic, because there is a lot of misinformation about migration.

Only around three per cent of the world’s population are migrants. And not only is the proportion so low, but it has been pretty much stable at that level for the past 50 years.

One interesting example is that, despite the amount of attention that migrants get in the media and in political discourse, only a small proportion of the world’s population are migrants – most people tend to spend their lives in the countries where they were born. In fact, only around three per cent of the world’s population are migrants. And not only is the proportion so low, but it has been pretty much stable at that level for the past 50 years.

Highlighting these kinds of gaps between representation and reality was one of our key motivations.

How did you research the book?

We drew on a range of sources to research and write the book. We conducted interviews with stakeholders such as policymakers, judges, prosecutors, both at the national and EU level. We conducted surveys with migrants and refugees, and we also looked at policy documents and legislation to examine the policy changes over time. Finally, we complemented all this with statistics on migration, crime, and other factors.

It was very important to us to both review the established academic evidence and to bring in the views of different stakeholders, including migrants.

There are lots of different perspectives on migration, and yet, you arrive at some conclusions through your research into some of the big claims made about migration and the impacts of migration policies. For example, you look at policies that try to deter migrants from coming to a country. Are those policies effective?

Deterrence policies are the basis of many policies on migration that we see today across Europe and North America. The idea behind deterrence supposes that people are rational decision makers, so that if we increase the costs of migrating, people will, in theory, decide not to migrate but to stay home.

Deterrence policies tend to serve domestic politics over policy outcomes – the demands of the local electorates more than the reasons why people migrate.

What we find is that deterrence policies often fail, and this is due, mainly, to four factors. First, although these policies increase the cost of the journey, they don’t address the root causes of migration, the structural factors pushing migrants to leave. Second, when deterrence policies have some kind of impact, they tend to divert routes. So, for instance, people may be diverted onto other sections of the border, rather than be deterred from entering.

Third, migrants’ degree of information is regularly overestimated. We conducted surveys in Italy and France and found that two-thirds of respondents weren’t aware of any measures concerning the sanctions for irregular migration. Importantly, of those who knew about those measures, most of them learned about them only once they arrived in Europe. Lastly, most of these deterrence policies tend to serve domestic politics over policy outcomes – the demands of the local electorates more than the reasons why people migrate.

I’d like to pick up on your point that deterrence policies push regular migration into irregular migration, where people cross at different border points rather than decide not to come. Of course, this presents many dangers and problems for migrants, but you argue this also has negative impacts on people in the host country. How does that work?

Yes. Having these restrictive policies increases irregularity, with negative consequences both for migrants and receiving societies.

If low-skilled migrants have no way to enter receiving societies in Europe other than irregularly, they are forced to rely on smuggling networks. This means that they are more subject to exploitation and are highly vulnerable. Once they arrive in Europe, they cannot work legally because they don’t have a permit. This means they do not pay taxes and cannot find regular housing, and they are pushed into the margins of society. This creates a limbo where migrants cannot be regularised, yet they cannot be returned to their own country either, due to the many challenges involved with returns.

We often hear that migrants commit more crime than citizens. Our argument in the book is that where this is the case, this is a result of securitisation and restrictive policies. First, this is because migrants are marginalised and deprived of access to regular employment. Second, it is because policies that criminalise migration create an association in people’s minds that there is a link between migrants and crime, reinforcing this marginalisation process.

On the point of securitisation, one of the key moments you look at is this period from 2014 to 2016 when there was a huge uptick in the number of refugees arriving in Europe. The EU’s response was to attempt to secure its borders. But you suggest that such securitisation policymaking does not actually produce more security.

In fact, our argument is that securitisation produces more insecurity rather than more security. This is because when you have these very restrictive policies that present migration as a security threat that should be stopped, migration automatically becomes more visible. Meanwhile, the expectations that the government will be able to control migration increase.

When [restrictive, anti-immigration] policies fail, because migration has become more visible, the failure itself is more visible

Then, when these policies fail, because migration has become more visible, the failure itself is more visible. This leads to more insecurity for the receiving societies, and locks countries into a vicious cycle of insecurity.

For instance, France has had a policy to criminalise migrants for irregular migration since the 1930s. Now, they did try to get rid of some aspects of that crime over time, however, for every piece of the policy they removed, they introduced new related sanctions to assuage voters.

This shows how, although it’s easy to introduce new securitising measures, politically, it’s hard to remove them once they’re in place, generating an insecurity loop.

We hear in political rhetoric and in the media claims that migrants could be taking jobs from citizens of receiving countries, and that their arrival could have a negative economic impact, for instance through increasing the demand for social welfare. But your research contradicts these claims.

We hear very often that migrants take our jobs or lower our wages. However, the reality is that migrants mostly do those jobs that locals refuse to do.

The working conditions for migrants are usually below minimum standards, and underemployment is very common. There is a lot of exploitation, for instance, in Southern Europe, of migrants by employers, particularly in the agricultural sector in countries such as Italy. And there is no strong evidence that migrants displace local workers.

Interestingly, studies show that if we were to liberalise or remove all barriers to migration at the global level, the world GDP would increase by 150 per cent – a massive boost.

Your book discusses how right-wing populism has latched on to anti-immigrant rhetoric. Why do you think migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have become such scapegoats for this broad populist movement on the right?

Our argument is that populism doesn’t result from the presence of migrants. Rather, it is the consequence of an economic discontent stemming from globalisation and its uneven impact, both across and within countries. This discontent is hard to address politically, and migrants are easier to scapegoat – because they are foreigners, and because they cannot vote.

If the root causes of migration are related to globalisation, then only addressing the structural components of globalisation can address migration.

Often, we hear populist actors saying that we should “help migrants at home” as an easy, alternative solution. In the book, we ask whether that would be possible. The idea of the “migration hump” hypothesis is important here. Research has found that in the short term, more development leads to more emigration from countries, and it’s only in the longer term that emigration comes down. This is because with development, people’s aspirations and economic capabilities to migrate increase up to a certain point, and only later they decrease, as the opportunities in their home countries grow.

Our argument is that it’s not as easy as just helping them at home. If the root causes of migration are related to globalisation, then only addressing the structural components of globalisation can address migration. We need substantial structural intervention in the sending countries with a focus on education, research, development and technological innovation.

Those types of structural interventions would need to be huge in scale and long-term. How do you see the politics of migration playing out in the short to medium term when it seems this populist, right-wing, anti-immigrant stance has such a hold, particularly in Europe and the US? Do you think it’s possible to move towards these kinds of structural changes and shift people’s attitudes towards embracing migration?

I think for that we would need a radical change in the way we speak about migration. We need to recognise that migration is a positive force for European and North American economies, which are structurally dependent on foreign workers.

Crucially, we need more open, legal pathways to tackle the exploitation, marginalisation and risks that come with the irregular journeys. Better legal pathways would benefit both refugees and economic migrants. And receiving countries need both high-skilled and low-migrants, for their economies. Providing safe, legal routes is key to enable migration management that is more sound, more humane, and more effective.

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

Main image: Andrea Cairone on Unsplash.

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AI, Automation and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex. Anthony King. Princeton University Press. 2025.

AI and modern warfare

Is artificial intelligence (AI) about to automate warfare? With near-weekly prognoses by prominent public figures – from Henry Kissinger to Stephen Hawking – about the demise of the human combatant, you would be forgiven for believing so. The implications of this potential transformation are huge, both for the strategic questions it raises for militaries about how future wars will be won or lost, but also for the moral questions raised by machines making life and death decisions. Indeed, these latter concerns have already prompted prominent voices in the AI research community to call for a ban on autonomous weapon systems.

For Anthony King AI, Automation and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex, the problem with these visions of fully automated warfare is that they fetishise AI as a discrete technology (20) and ignore its organisational aspects. King proposes an alternative, sociological approach to AI in warfare. Foregrounded by this approach is the “ecology” (ix) of novel and unusual working practices required to sustain AI as a viable technology in military settings, as well as the institutional transformations – i.e. within armed forces and defence ministries – required to accommodate those practices.

The military-tech complex

For King, the most significant of these is the “unlikely alliance between tech companies and defence ministries, between military professionals and civilian experts” (viii). For want of capital and in-house expertise, military organisations of predominantly Western states are turning increasingly to commercial actors to provide data services, including AI. But unlike the legacy prime commercial model – where states dictate requirements through formal procurement methods – the emerging “military-tech complex” (as King names it) originates from informal, bottom-up relationships. It requires civilian personnel to embed within armed forces to support the constant refinement of AI and related software applications.

More than automating warfare, AI’s real appeal to militaries is for supporting human decision-makers in complex tasks like mission planning and targeting.

King’s hope is that the book “persuades some scholars to focus less on automation and technology and more on organisation and expertise” (ix). On that measure the book succeeds. It makes a convincing case that, more than automating warfare, AI’s real appeal to militaries is for supporting human decision-makers in complex tasks like mission planning and targeting. Particularly interesting here is the policy literature King marshals demonstrating that militaries have played down the future role of AI for automation. Instead, they see AI as a tool to help make sense of the copious data collected on the modern battlefield to support decision-making.

That said, it is unclear which scholars the book exists to persuade. It is true that debate on military applications of AI initially focused heavily on the issue of automation, only recently – and belatedly – turning to the issue of AI for decision support. But serious scholarship has long centred on the implications of AI-driven automation for the human role in the use of force. Driving this is the insight that what military personnel can do with AI is dependent on what has already been done by other actors – including commercial software engineers.

This underpins a vibrant research agenda across several disciplines examining who these actors are, how they can be relied upon and what their responsibilities and obligations are. King somewhat glosses over this at the book’s outset by presenting existing debate as a binary between AI automation optimists – for whom human combatants are a thing of the past – and AI sceptics – those who think that the technical limitations of AI will leave it ill-suited to use in war. This framing misses whether scholars of military AI haven’t already taken a sociological approach to the subject and, if so, whether King’s approach extends it.

Silicon Valley’s politics

The sociological approach has clear value for its potential to shine a light on the political implications of the emerging military-tech complex. As King highlights, since technologies can “never be separated from the interests, understanding, and purposes” of their creators (60), it follows that a clear-eyed account of the emerging institutional arrangements needed to support AI should also attend to the values and beliefs of those civilian experts involved in this. Silicon Valley looms particularly large here. King describes the recent shift in Silicon Valley’s politics, from holding a “radical libertarian, globalised ideology,” to a techno-nationalist position driven by a concern “with competition from China and with the security and prosperity of the US” (71-72).

In the short- to mid-term, this shift means an increased willingness of Silicon Valley to work with militaries which in turn means a transformation of military procurement to align with the tech sector’s product development cycles. But the longer-term implications are left unexplored. King is cautious about speculation and champions an empirical approach focused on how AI is being used and implemented by militaries in the present and the near future (18). But how exactly AI technologies embed the “interests, understanding, and purposes” of Silicon Valley, and how those values can be negotiated in a defence context goes unexamined. This omission will be felt especially strongly by those interested in the European defence context wherein the negotiation of Silicon Valley’s latest political shift has become a salient question amidst an increasingly fractured trans-Atlantic alliance.

The firms comprising Silicon Valley remain strategic actors with commercial interests. Investment in AI R&D is astronomical, and the soft budget constraints and blurry metrics of success makes defence a highly desirable customer for the tech sector.

There are also difficult methodological questions to unpick, such as whether (and which) values are sincerely held by commercial tech providers. King’s suggestion that Silicon Valley’s political conversion results from a concern for the security and prosperity of the US doesn’t explain why this shift has entailed anti-democratic and anti-liberal elements. It also underplays the economic imperative. The firms comprising Silicon Valley remain strategic actors with commercial interests. Investment in AI R&D is astronomical, and the soft budget constraints and blurry metrics of success makes defence a highly desirable customer for the tech sector. Clarity about the motivations of these actors seems important for understanding the longer-term implications of the military-tech complex, particularly as the first part of that dyad becomes increasingly dependent on the latter.

Military AI uses and futures

AI, Automation and War effectively demonstrates how armed forces perceive the utility of AI, particularly for its use in data-driven decision-making. It is less successful at illuminating the actual utility of such uses. Discussion in the book devoted to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)’s use of AI to assist in identifying targets to attack (including people, vehicles, and buildings) in Gaza, is particularly illustrative of this. The IDF’s mass surveillance of Palestinians has meant that the amount of data it collects exceeds the human cognitive and institutional capacity for making sense of that data. Their solution has been to employ AI to synthesise this data and flag potential targets for review by human intelligence analysts – as in the case of the now infamous Gospel and Lavender systems. In this way, writes King, “AI facilitated dynamic targeting, which was also more accurate than targeting had been in the past” (127). But the meaning of “accuracy” is not as clear as King suggests when classificatory algorithms don’t have a single measure of it. Indeed, the word ‘accuracy’ does a lot of unacknowledged work throughout the book, and what is missing is something to help readers navigate these sorts of (often contested) claims rather than have them accept on faith alone answers to such important questions like whether AI improves outcomes.

AI, Automation and War is a corrective to the kind of speculative futurism that characterises public commentary on AI and warfare.

AI, Automation and War is a corrective to the kind of speculative futurism that characterises public commentary on AI and warfare. King’s focus on the complex integration of commercial actors, military personnel and AI technologies within defence institutions is compelling. But the book is limited in two important ways. The first is that, for all its ambition, it fails to convey exactly what makes this story so consequential, particularly for defence organisations. The second is that describing how militaries have come to use and justify AI is not the same as assessing whether that use is justified.

Future research in this area could address the ideational aspects attendant on these sociological transformations. Very little is currently known about how AI systems perform beyond testing. Examining how performance metrics are being shaped by the tech sector might help us understand how long-term understandings of success in the adoption of these systems in military settings is changing – and whose interests exactly such understandings serve.

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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Pittsburgh is home to a thriving arts community, anchored by independent bookstores, literary events organisations, a robust public library system, and book publishers. Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures, the International Poetry Forum, and City of Asylum regularly bring nationally and internationally renowned authors and speakers to town. The many branches of the Carnegie Library system ensure that residents of every neighbourhood have access to quality literature, while publishers such as the University of Pittsburgh Press (where I work), Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Autumn House Press regularly publish nationally- and internationally-recognised books.

Central to that vibrant culture are the region’s numerous independent bookstores. More than just sell books, they all regularly host community events such as author readings and book clubs, becoming spaces that bring literature lovers together. Let’s take a quick tour of a few of those bookstores that have distinctive identities.

Stay Gold Books

Our tour begins in the eastern neighbourhood of Regent Square. On Braddock Avenue, in the heart of the main business district, you’ll find Stay Gold Books, whose colourful exterior leads to a cosy interior filled with new books and charming gifts. Founded and run by Carrie and Corey Wittig, Stay Gold exudes such a strong sense of community that walking into the store feels like being welcomed into the owners’ home. The store features buzzy new releases, compelling nonfiction, quirky arts books, and everything in between. Their busy events calendar offers a range of readings and book clubs, including the city’s only cookbook club and potluck.

Fungus Books

Just a few blocks away, in Wilkinsburg, Fungus Books is nestled among a small row of businesses. Like its namesake organism, you could walk right past the store if you weren’t looking for it. But that would be a mistake. In its short existence, Fungus has quickly become the go-to place locally to seek out used and rare printed matter in their fields of art, botany, drugs, poetry, science fiction, to name just a few. They also claim to have “the largest in-person selection of rare and sought-after sleaze [vintage erotica and pulp fiction]  on the East Coast.” Fungus is located across the street from a French bakery, making it the only store in the city where you can buy some sleaze, and then walk across the street and buy a croissant. The perfect Saturday morning, if you ask me.

Bottom Feeder Books

Venturing across Frick Park and into Point Breeze, you’ll find Bottom Feeder Books. Located on a quiet street, Bottom Feeder offers a discerning selection of used and rare books focused on art, literature, poetry, books about books, and film, often with a modernist or avant garde bent. The collection is edgy, yet approachable, with rare editions of literary classics alongside contemporary global art tomes. Notably, the entire store is organised by the author’s last name, instead of by genre. But instead of feeling chaotic, it was refreshing to see work of fiction next to a philosophy text next to a poetry collection, as if they were in quiet conversation with each other. It added to a fun sense of discovery. Bottom Feeder exudes a calm intellect; it is the bookstore equivalent of taking a deep sigh of relief.

White Whale Books and Coffee

Leaving Point Breeze, we head to the neighbourhood of Bloomfield, home of White Whale Books and Coffee. Their white brick building looms over the neighbourhood like a literal white whale, but once inside you won’t need to hunt like Ahab for a good read. You are greeted immediately by exciting new releases in fiction and nonfiction, a colourful children’s section, and a staggering collection of genre fiction. Additionally, don’t miss the floor-to-ceiling shelves highlighting regional history. Their packed events calendar regularly hosts readings by both nationally known authors and local favourites. They also recently added a bar, so the hungry booklover can grab a latte, cocktail or mocktail while they browse. A feeling of friendliness emanates from everything White Whale does, underscoring their motto, “Conversation. Community. Culture.”

City of Asylum Bookstore

Finally, we’ll cross the Allegheny River to head to the North Side and City of Asylum Bookstore. Full disclosure: I managed CoAB from 2016-2022. The store is the project of City of Asylum, a nonprofit dedicated to providing residencies to exiled writers and artists from around the world. Reflecting City of Asylum’s commitment to freedom of creative expression, the bookstore maintains a broad focus on translated and international literature in all genres. You may not find all the recent NY Times bestsellers, but you will find Japanese fiction, Middle Eastern cookbooks, and Latin American children’s books. The store is unwavering in its commitment to bringing international literature to the Pittsburgh community. What’s more, the bookstore shares space with City of Asylum’s performance venue, which often means you’ll be able to browse while listening to a jazz concert. It’s a special place.

Pittsburgh has a lively bookstore community, and I hope you enjoy your visit to these wonderful spaces.

Main image: Zhen Yao on Unsplash.

Do you know a place with great bookshops? As part of a regular feature on LSE Review of Books, we’re asking academics and students to recommend their favourite bookshops in a particular city or town to share with our book-loving community of readers the world over.

Bookshops could be academic, alternative, multilingual, hobby-based, secret or underground institutions, second-hand outlets or connected to a university. We’d like to cover all world regions too and are particularly keen to feature cities outside of Europe and North America.

If something comes to mind, we’re looking for a brief introduction about the city, a selection of three or four bookshops with around 150 words per bookshop, detailing why each one is a must-see. Our editorial team can then find suitable photos and links to accompany the piece, though you’re welcome to supply these too.

Email us if you’d like to contribute: lsereviewofbooks@lse.ac.uk

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Judging under Constraint: The Politics of Deference by International Courts. Theresa Squatrito. Cambridge University Press. 2025.

The concept of judicial deference is sometimes misrepresented as a black-and-white issue: a court decision is classified as either deferential or not. The term “deference” involves the principle that the courts will decline to make their own independent judgment on a particular issue. It differs from non-justiciability, where the latter applies to cases where an issue was said to be inherently unsuitable for judicial determination by reason only of its subject matter. Deference, on the other hand can be a matter of degree rather than a blanket rule entirely preventing judicial scrutiny.

Judicial deference in the Global South

Until now, judicial deference, activism and restraint have been considered almost exclusively in the context of Western international courts, While the instruments of deference of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union have been subject to in-depth examination. Meanwhile, international courts in the Global South are usually relegated to the background, as if their geographical location and more recent establishment rendered them indifferent to judicial deference or incapable of exercising it. Very few books deal with this subject in international jurisdictions – Johannes Hendrik Fahner’s Judicial Deference in International Adjudication (2022) and Deference in International Courts and Tribunals edited by Lukasz Gruszczynski and Wouter Werner (2014) are two notable examples.

Theresa Squatrito, a specialist in international jurisdictions, examines these rarely studied courts after brilliantly tackling, among other things, the performance of international courts and tribunals in previous books. She examines the occurrence of deference in three international courts: your three case studies, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), and the African Court of Human and People’s Rights (ACtHPR) Beyond being underexamined, these courts are also interesting because of their more recent creation compared to courts in the Global North. The ACtHPR was established in 2004, while the other two were both established in 2001.

Neither the EACJ, CCJ nor the ACtHPR simply refrain from issuing judgments or actively endorsing a state’s decision.

The specific challenges faced by countries in the Global South – including political and economic instability, limited state authority, and issues of social integration – have shaped the form and function of courts therein. The effectiveness of these courts varies, and they operate according to different criteria than those in the Global North. The courts reflect the political systems within which they operate, revealing the conflicts, priorities and norms of the individuals and institutions that seek to instrumentalise them to achieve their objectives.

Courts’ independence and convergence

The author’s meticulous analysis demonstrates that neither the EACJ, CCJ nor the ACtHPR simply refrain from issuing judgments or actively endorsing a state’s decision. Their role goes far beyond that. Everything hinges on strategic manoeuvres and the two elements that stem from them: the degree of independence (the ability of courts to make decisions free from outside pressure) and convergence (when two courts seized of the same or similar matter, issue convergent judgments). The greater the divergences, the more difficult it will be for these states to disregard the Court’s decision. The more states have the opportunity to act in accordance with the Court’s rules, the more vulnerable the Court becomes, which can limit its strategic room for manoeuvre.

But in reality, judicial deference occurs is influenced by many interrelated factors and manifests itself along a continuous spectrum. The author brilliantly demonstrates the unique nature of the constrained judgments of these jurisdictions, which operate within a complex context where each evolves in its own way. In the first chapter, the author clarifies the central phenomenon of the work: deference, by proposing an operationalisation of deference based on three characteristics of judicial decisions: the outcome of the case, legal interpretation and reasoning, and reparations.

The impact of a court’s strategic space

The objective is to explain the variations in judicial deference while situating judicial decision-making within the strategic space of international jurisdictions (55). This strategic space derives from its competing incentives, which it has by virtue of being a court. This corresponds to the scope of this space. In this first chapter, by proposing an operationalisation of deference based on the outcome of the case (33), interpretation, legal reasoning, and reparations (32), the author argues that the key factors shaping a jurisdiction’s strategic space are the rules guaranteeing judicial independence and the degree of political fragmentation (23).

Like the other two courts, the ACtHPR’s colonial past has led to its oscillating between political independence and non-interference on the one hand, and regional cooperation and human rights on the other.

More precisely, its weak formal independence undermines its legitimacy. Analysing the ACtHPR, the author observes that, like the other two courts, its colonial past has led to its oscillating between political independence and non-interference on the one hand, and regional cooperation and human rights on the other. This phenomenon, exacerbated by complex legal pluralism (206) which refers to the co-existence of different legal systems within a society or geographical area, judicial insecurity, and distrust of the state legal order, explains its reluctance to refrain from exercising its authority (214), precisely because of its significant formal independence.

According to the author, while the EACJ has the smallest strategic space due to its low formal independence and low to medium political fragmentation, the CCJ has the second largest strategic space, resulting from strong formal independence and homogeneous preferences among CARICOM member states. On the other hand, the ACtHPR shows both relatively political fragmentation and high formal independence and therefore possesses the largest strategic space.

Trends across the three courts

The author presents overall trends in deference of each court (chapters four to six) and reveals that the EACJ decisions demonstrate greater deference than those of the other two courts. While the EACJ adopts restrictive interpretations and applies limited scrutiny when examining the actions or decisions of states, in the other two, restrictive interpretations and limited review tend to be the exception.

Squatrito suggests that non-deference is more pronounced when a decision combines several remedies, as opposed to a single remedy (chapter two). For example, if a tribunal orders both restitution and compensation, it demonstrates less deference than if it only ordered compensation. Of the three measures of deference, the ACtHPR demonstrates the greatest deference, followed by the CCJ and the EACJ. Over time, international communities can exert their influence over their strategic space by adopting practices that help enhance their legitimacy while reducing the plausibility of state resistance through persuasive fragmentation and public legitimation.

In terms of a court’s citation practices – which she believes can also reveal the strength of its arguments – the EACJ cites external case law more frequently than the CCJ and the ACtHPR. In this regard, she argues that, while all courts cite authoritative sources to support their judgments, a court’s strategic leeway determines the type of sources that strengthen its legitimacy and mitigate resistance from states.

The book sheds light on how courts in developing countries defer in their own way to states, as well as their relationships with issues of judicial independence, political fragmentation, and legitimacy.

Balanced in its approach, the book does not claim to demonstrate how the courts should have acted, nor how they should have proceeded. No chapter seeks to prove that the courts failed in their duty. Nor does Squatrito try to answer the question of why excessive deference – and not a certain or even undue amount of judicial restraint – can become very problematic within the jurisdictions studied. She leaves the reader to form their own opinion.

Overall, this illuminating, well-written volume is grounded in rich academic scholarship and will be an excellent resource to those interested in the workings of international courts in the Global South. It should be read carefully and thoughtfully. It sheds light, effectively and in depth, how courts in developing countries defer in their own way to states, as well as issues of judicial independence, political fragmentation, and legitimacy.

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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Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead. Kenneth Rogoff. Yale University Press. 2025 (hardback); 2026 (paperback).

How the dollar gained and held power

Rogoff, a former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), opens this book on the supremacy of the dollar by explaining its title. It is borrowed from a remark by US Treasury Secretary John Connally in 1971, after President Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. Facing displeased European finance ministers in Rome, Connally simply said, “It’s our dollar, but it’s your problem.” From there, Rogoff traces how the dollar arrived at such an imperious position. Before it, the international monetary system witnessed the rise and fall of multiple reserve currencies – the Spanish Peso, Dutch Florin, and British Pound. He notes that the typical life cycle of a reserve currency spans one to two centuries. On that scale, the dollar is still middle-aged, with a long road ahead – though not a smooth one.

In the post-war era, virtually every advanced economy sought to manage its relationship with the dollar rather than challenge it

Rogoff argues that dollar dominance is both a matter of luck and deliberate policy. Competitors have tried and failed; circumstances, too, have repeatedly worked in the dollar’s favour. Serious challengers have included the Soviet Union, Japan, Europe, and now China. After the 1970s, the Soviets could no longer sustain the pace of growth and innovation demanded by the Cold War. Japan, whose real estate prices and stock market share exceeded America’s in the 1980s, was forced into the Plaza Accord of 1985, and Rogoff does not hesitate to question America’s role in pressuring Tokyo into an agreement that pushed the yen past recovery. Europe succeeded in creating the euro, but the Eurozone crisis, rising inflation, and slowing growth have curtailed its challenge for the foreseeable future. China, meanwhile, signals a slowdown after its spectacular rise in the 1990s and 2000s. A real estate bubble – strikingly similar to Japan’s – sits at the core of its decelerating economy. An overbuilt nation with weak domestic consumption has reached the outer limit of its export-led growth model.

Internally, American dominance rests on its position as post-World War II first mover. The Bretton Woods system placed the US at the centre of the currency order. Its legal protections for investors, the depth of its capital markets, dollar swap facilities, and military dominance, which ensures no adversary dares strike, all reinforce that position. Even during crises, capital flows into dollars, and American interest rates fall further, allowing the US to borrow more from the world at lower cost. Overtaking the dollar, Rogoff writes, “takes much more” (169).

The Triffin trap and US privilege

A major strand of the book examines how, in the post-war era, virtually every advanced economy sought to manage its relationship with the dollar rather than challenge it. Chief among the temptations was the fixed exchange rate. The allure of the fixed exchange rate stemmed from the dollar’s ability to anchor a nation’s economy to a stable and credible external standard. It helped countries to effectively import monetary reliability, reducing inflationary pressures and smooth out the volatilities of international commerce. Even in developing countries, citizens trusted the dollar more than their own central banks.

Rogoff argues that this dynamic activates the “Triffin Dilemma”: a country cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, open capital markets, and an independent interest rate policy. Nations that peg their currency to the dollar relinquish control over much of their macroeconomic toolkit. He substantiates this with examples spanning Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, Lebanon, and Argentina.

The fixed exchange rate, Rogoff concludes, can serve as a temporary solution. But it is “better to exit from a position of relative strength than to wait to be forced out when overwhelmed by speculators” (153). He also traces how countries adapted to manage these risks. The Tokyo Consensus emerged as a middle ground between the Washington Consensus of 1989, which favoured market flexibility and floating exchange rates, and the Buenos Aires Consensus of 2003, which favoured market control and fixed rates. The Tokyo model combines managed floats, large central bank dollar reserves, capital controls, and strong regulatory buffers. These lessons were hard-won from the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, when the IMF visibly fell short. Rogoff also discusses technological alternatives like central bank digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins, and suggests that crypto could meaningfully challenge the dollar, particularly in the vast, opaque underground economy.

Being the anchor of global finance confers enormous advantages on the United States. The dollar delivers geopolitical influence, close to a billion dollars in annual economic benefits, and near – costless borrowing capacity, the last of which has historically financed American wars (214). It grants the Federal Reserve the ability to print unlimited dollars in a crisis, giving Washington sweeping leverage over the evolution of the global payments system (217). And it arms the US with the power to impose financial sanctions on any actor working against American interests.

Yet Rogoff is careful to note that this dominance has not been coerced. By simply being the most effective allocator of global capital and the world’s most trusted financial intermediary, the US has earned its “exorbitant privilege”.

The future of the dollar

Rogoff’s sharpest arguments come at the end, where he locates the real threat to dollar dominance not in Beijing or Brussels, but in Washington itself – in soaring debt, rising inflation, and mounting pressure on Federal Reserve independence.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the US debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 166 per cent by 2054. For the first time since World War II, in 2024, US foreign liabilities exceeded its income from foreign assets. Net foreign liabilities have jumped from 17 per cent of GDP in 2010 to 71 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 (223). This is what Rogoff calls the “Modern Triffin Dilemma.” While the older version warned that gold reserves might fall short of dollar liabilities, the modern version warns that total repayment capacity may be overwhelmed by accumulated obligations. Decades of falling interest rates, he argues, have created the dangerous illusion that borrowing is nearly free in America.

The Federal Reserve’s independence, meanwhile, faces pressure from both ends of the political spectrum. That independence is the guarantee behind the dollar’s value.

The Federal Reserve’s independence, meanwhile, faces pressure from both ends of the political spectrum. That independence is the guarantee behind the dollar’s value – the bedrock of investor confidence. If debt continues to collide with higher real interest rates, and if political interference constrains the Fed’s ability to tame inflation, the consequences will be severe.

To map it overall, Rogoff convincingly argues that the dollar will remain at the top – but of a smaller hill. In a more multipolar world, others will slowly gain ground. And when the dollar eventually descends, financial stability will shake with it. To echo Connally, it will undoubtedly be everyone’s problem.

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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Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence. Jamie J. Hagen, Samuel Ritholtz and Andrew Delatolla. Bristol University Press. 2025.

For scholars of Queer Conflict Studies, Feminist International Relations (IR) and Queer International Relations IR, Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence is both a homecoming and a departure. In this expansive volume, the editors, Jamie J. Hagen, Samuel Ritholtz and Andrew Delatolla chart the emerging field of Queer Conflict Research, which examines how the logics of gender and sexuality shape queer experiences, production, and study of political violence, peacebuilding, and security.

Charting queer conflict research

 Situated at the intersection of feminist security studies (FSS), queer IR, and conflict studies, the volume builds on the work of predecessors such as Cynthia Enloe, Cynthia Weber, Dianne Otto, and J. Ann Tickner, advancing queer conflict research as a distinct conversation on political violence. However, in a very queer fashion, the editors begin by underscoring that they do not seek to police the boundaries of queer conflict research (1, 2). This sentiment reverberates throughout the collection. 

Comprised of contributions from 19 scholars, the volume consistently foregrounds the plurality of approaches, methods, epistemologies and lived experiences that constitute the field (212). In doing so, it demonstrates that these differences can converge, intersect, or never meet, remaining in productive tension and collectively shaping the contours of queer conflict research, without diluting the queer resistance to a fixed definition. 

Centring queer and trans perspectives expands the meaning of peace and conflict beyond state declarations and recognised conflict zones.

Detailing the significance of queerness in conflict research, the introduction illustrates how centring queer and trans perspectives expands the meaning of peace and conflict beyond state declarations and recognised conflict zones. It reveals how queer (in)security is often produced and negotiated in the intimate, social, and everyday spaces, long before armed conflict. This violence takes the forms of familial rejection, social exclusion, institutional discrimination and persecution. The introduction further emphasises epistemological conversations between mainstream political science and queer and critical approaches, focusing on productive engagement rather than disciplinary separation. Committed to the emancipatory commitments of FSS, the volume is organised around three interconnected lines of inquiry, exploring queer approaches, methods, and experiences in relation to the “what” and “how” of conflict research. 

Queer epistemologies

Beginning with approaches to conflict research, this section explores queer epistemologies by centring the politics of knowledge production and the ethical implications of the research design. Ritholtz provides what they call as a “how to think about epistemology” guide to navigate the academic landscapes that have historically dismissed or siloed queer and trans subjectivities. Identifying the creative potential of research design, they frame queer as subject, structure and method (19).

Critiquing institutional ignorance, the “politics of not knowing” Serrano-Amaya highlights the intertwined roles of academia and activism in producing knowledge while cautioning that increased visibility can homogenise queer experiences and institutionalise victimhood (55). Hagen extends these debates into a queer feminist praxis, using participatory workshops to foreground collaboration and cross-movement solidarity while addressing the neglect of queer women in the WPS agenda (61). Taken together, these chapters move beyond the “add and stir” tokenistic approaches critiqued by feminists, framing queer conflict research as a reflexive and politically situated practice of knowledge production. 

Methodologies pluralism

The collection also refuses to reduce queer research to a prescribed approach and methodology, and merely the inclusion of LGBTQ+ subjects. Evidently, the section on methods begins with Cooper-Cunningham arguing that methods are not inherently queer but rather become so through their capacity to interrogate cisheteronormative structures of power (91). With a tripartite framework of word, image, and body, he further demonstrates the potential of the visual as a method in studying queer (in)visibility and (in)security in the context of Russian state homophobia.

Rather than separating trauma and emotions from memory and lived experiences in pursuit of ‘objective facts’, the chapter treats them as indispensable to understanding conflict

A compelling observation emerges in poetry as a method, where Delatolla disrupts the foundations of social-scientific methods and heteromasculinist linear logic of temporality, causality, and objectivity by using art, literature, and affect as legitimate sources of knowledge. Rather than separating trauma and emotions from memory and lived experiences in pursuit of “objective facts”, the chapter treats them as indispensable to understanding conflict in the context of the Lebanese civil war.

Not only does the method reveal the complex role of trauma, but it also exposes the irrationality of treating emotional detachment as a prerequisite for objectivity. Conflict is messy, contradictory, and often makes no sense. Detachment then becomes a form of epistemic violence that sanitises the realities of conflict. This critique is echoed in the conclusion, where, extending Serrano-Amaya’s argument, Laura Sjoberg reflects on the impossibility of remaining disinvested in the results of nuclear deterrence. Such detachment is implicated in invisibilising marginalised lives and sustaining institutional ignorance (207). 

Additionally, Simonetto identifies “Ruthless Archives” as hostile institutional records that preserve queer lives only through policing and pathologisation. This chapter illustrates the centrality of historical enquiry to conflict research and revealing how archives themselves reproduce political violence through surveillance and criminalisation (131). Through visual methods, poetry, workshops, archives, activist knowledge, and trauma-informed research, the volume consistently challenges conventional notions of rigorous research scholarship. It positions methodological innovations as integral to queer inquiry rather than an exception.

Ethics in practice

The final section shifts from theory and methodology to the lived experiences of conducting queer conflict research. While Nagarajan emphasises non-extractive practices, reciprocity, and community safety in research with queer community in Nigeria (174), Munhazim reflects on finding kinship, care, and chosen family in the fieldwork with the American Afghan diaspora that reshaped their own relationship with queerness as informed by Afghanness (188).

With case studies ranging from Argentine archives to American Afghan diaspora in California, the chapters illustrate the importance of contextual specificity and resist the universalisation of queer experiences.

This complicates the conventional distinctions between the researcher and researched, highlighting the relational, intersubjective, and ethical dimensions of queer research fieldwork. The concluding roundtable conversation further notes that much research on queer lives in conflict is undertaken by NGOs despite limited academic infrastructure and funding. Such conditions underscore the need for intersectional, collaborative, and context-sensitive research practices (194). 

Context, futures, and researching otherwise

Besides methods, experiences, and approaches, the collection’s diversity is also reflected in its geographical and empirical breadth. With case studies ranging from Argentine archives to American Afghan diaspora in California, the chapters illustrate the importance of contextual specificity and resist the universalisation of queer experiences. This is also evident in the volume’s generous use of endnotes, which function not merely as a site for citations but as spaces for contextualisation and qualification, reinforcing the commitment to avoiding decontextualised claims and engaging readers in adjacent conversations rather than presenting the concepts as settled or universal. 

However, a concluding synthesis of how these diverse interventions collectively reshape the study of conflict would have further helped establish the field. While refusing disciplinary closure allows Queer Conflict Research to embrace the queer commitments to fluidity and plurality, it also leaves unresolved the precise contours that distinguish queer conflict research from its neighbouring and related fields. Even so, this is more of a productive tension than a shortcoming, reflecting the editors’ commitment to plurality. 

The two resource guides in the appendices, addressing the ethical research conduct with queer communities in sensitive contexts and the researcher’s psychological well-being, further enrich the volume. They extend its queer ethical framework into praxis, making queer conflict research more grounded, responsible and accessible. The volume ends by moving towards multiple and transformative futures of queer conflict research, inviting scholars to further complicate, articulate and expand this emerging field.

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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Working Nature: A History of the Energy Economy. Daniela Russ. Verso. 2026.

Marxist scholarship argues that, within capitalism, factors of production must first be abstracted from their socio-natural context in order to contribute surplus value. Daniela Russ’s argument in Working Nature begins by unsettling the apparent naturalness of energy itself. She writes that “Human beings have no natural sense for energy” (27). Heat, light, movement, coal, falling water and electricity are not experienced as a single phenomenological category. They become “energy” only through abstraction: through the practical and intellectual labour that renders different natural processes comparable in terms of their capacity to perform work.

In this sense, energy is neither a physical substance nor a mere idea – it is a practical relationship between society and nature. Instead of offering a conventional history of energy use, Russ offers a critical history of the concept of energy and of the infrastructures forcing nature into work.

Energy as a concept

This book is a work of historical-materialist epistemology. It studies how fuel scientists, electrotechnical engineers and energy economists struggled, in their scientific practice, to make natural things perform regular, comparable work. To approach nature with the concept of energy in mind means to treat objects that are phenomenologically radically distinct – rivers, human beings, wind, coal – as if they were interchangeable in their exploitation for production.

Russ gives an illuminating account of the transition from ‘forces of nature’ to ‘sources of energy’.

Russ gives an illuminating account of the transition from “forces of nature” to “sources of energy”. This shift, which began in the 19th century, is not merely semantic. Earlier languages of force suggested active, unruly and autonomous powers in nature. By contrast, “sources of energy” imply stores of motive power that can be extracted, converted and put to use. The change marks a broader transformation in which natural forces are no longer primarily powers to be negotiated with, but resources to be objectified, standardised and commanded.

Nature resists objectification

Russ draws on Adorno’s concept of negative dialectics. For Hegel, dialectics moves towards a kind of reconciliation: contradictions develop, are mediated and are integrated into a higher form of the whole. Adorno, on the other hand, was suspicious of such “positive” outcomes. His dialectic is negative: it does not want to arrive at synthesis too quickly; it remains with contradiction, not because he is a pessimist, but because reality is itself contradictory, damaged, violent and unjust.

The concept of non-identity is crucial, capturing Adorno’s account of the friction between term and object. Terms are necessary, but objects are never exhausted by the terms with which we name them. When we say “energy”, it sounds like a clear, universal and natural thing. But this concept encompasses many different things. Negative dialectics asks: what is lost when we subsume all of this under one concept? What does this concept say, and what does it conceal?

This is precisely the leitmotif of chapters three and four, exploring the resistance of coal and electricity. Coal is often treated as a stock of energy, as if its value lay naturally in the combustible material itself. Russ complicates this view by showing how coal is heterogeneous, unstable and deeply local in its material formation. Its quality varies across seams, mines and regions; its heating value declines through oxidation and storage; its combustion depends on furnaces, airflow, pressure, temperature and technical conditions. What appears to be the calorific value of coal is is in fact produced through standards, classifications, laboratory procedures, commercial contracts, transport infrastructures and market conventions. In Foucauldian terms, it is discursively produced.

In nature, electrical phenomena appear only as rare, unstable and elusive events of charge and discharge. Stable electric current exists only within technical systems

Yet coal’s materiality unsettles this abstraction. It changes, deteriorates, combusts, resists storage and refuses to behave as a docile stock. Russ skilffully shows that commodification is not simply imposed on passive matter. Nature is drawn into capitalist abstraction, but never without remainder. If coal retains visible traces of its material origin, electricity comes closer to a universal, purified and highly commodified form of energy. But Russ shows that electricity, too, is not a given natural resource. In nature, electrical phenomena appear only as rare, unstable and elusive events of charge and discharge. Stable electric current exists only within technical systems: circuits, generators, conductors, grids and regulatory infrastructures. Electricity is therefore socially created, though not under freely chosen conditions.

This makes electricity a revealing form of “working nature”. Precisely because it appears clean and flexible, it depends on dense systems of technical mediation: central stations, urban grids, corporate expansion, state regulation and the synchronisation of production and consumption. Yet here too Russ emphasises resistance. Capitalists cannot manipulate electricity as they wish. Electrical systems must respond to the material properties of current, resistance, load, transmission and grid stability. Saying that “energy and resistance are interdependent” (46), Russ develops her central dialectical insight: the attempt to command nature never abolishes nature’s resistance, but reorganises and displaces it. This insight recalls Kate Crawford’s analysis of human and non-human work within AI systems.

The politics within the kilowatt-hour

The final chapter turns to energy statistics and balances. Here Russ shows how the energy economy became governable through numbers. Energy balances make coal, oil, gas, hydropower, nuclear power and electricity comparable within a single accounting framework. They enable governments, corporations and international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to imagine substitutions between energy sources, model future demand and plan investment. (This was especially important after the oil shocks of the 1970s). But this comparability is not neutral; it depends on methodological choices about what counts as energy, how conversions are calculated, and which differences are made visible or invisible.

This chapter is pertinent to contemporary climate politics: energy balances and integrated models are central to how decarbonisation scenarios are imagined today. Russ does not propose simply rejecting such tools. Rather, she shows that they are historically produced instruments of governance. Like all models, they risk being mistaken for the reality they represent. They not only describe the energy economy, but shape what policymakers, investors and institutions consider possible. These insights extend Matthias Schmelzer’s investigation of the discursive production of “economic growth”, in which the OECD also played a central role.

Russ concludes by arguing that the energy economy is historical, but now appears quasi-natural. Under capitalist alienation, the law of accumulation is mystified as a law of nature.

Russ concludes by arguing that the energy economy is historical, but now appears quasi-natural. Under capitalist alienation, the law of accumulation is mystified as a law of nature. Yet she avoids a purely negative critique. She recognises that the concept of energy has also had a progressive dimension. It made it possible, especially in the early days of the USSR, to imagine abundance, democratic planning, relief from exhausting labour and new forms of collective life. The problem is that emancipation cannot be measured in units of energy. Productivism and the fetish of energy transition are, for Russ, dead ends.

Energy as a way of seeing

Working Nature suggests that the climate crisis cannot be addressed only by changing energy sources. Besides abandoning the growth imperative, it requires a deeper interrogation of the categories through which modern societies understand nature. Just as “growth” and “the economy” are not natural but historical forms, so too “energy” is a way of seeing and organising the world.

Energy has a history, and could have a different future.

For scholars of political ecology, eco-Marxism, environmental history and critical theory, Working Nature is a major contribution. It deepens debates on fossil capital(ism) by shifting attention from particular fuels to the category that makes fuels, currents and natural processes commensurable as energy. It also warns us that a green transition that leaves the energy concept untouched may reproduce the same instrumental, unsustainable relations within the web of life.

Russ’s book succeeds in showing that energy has a history, and could have a different future. If the energy economy is not natural, then neither are the social forms that organise it. Therefore, genuine ecological transformation must also mean rethinking the relation between nature, labour and social life – that is, both the means and purpose of a new ecological paradigm.

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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The New Censorship: How the War on the Media is Taking Us Down. Ayala Panievsky. Footnote. 2025.

New censorship under new authoritarianism

The term “New Censorship” is not, in fact, new, This is something Ayala Panievsky acknowledges in her recent book bearing the phrase with the subheading, How the War on the media is Taking Us Down (2025). While it is hard to date it with any certainty, “New Censorship” seems to have originated in 2004-2005 to describe the role that Institutional Review Boards in American universities had in supressing academic freedom. The term then became popularised in 2015 with the publication of journalist (and then-president of the Committee to Protect Journalists)’s Joel Simon’s The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom (2015). Simon’s use of the term highlights how governments around the world have curtailed the freedom of the press by using digital technology to supress, survey, and intimidate journalists.

Panievsky’s use of the term shares a lot with Simon’s, but also attends to developments that have emerged in our current populist era. It builds on ideas that have been developed by such prominent figures as Chinese artist and anti-censorship activist Ai Weiwei, who recently released a book on censorship, and American journalist Sharyl Attkisson, whose 2021 book Slanted focuses on the media’s role in obfuscating facts to sell a particular narrative.

Our “right-to-know” under threat

According to Panievsky, New Censorship now describes a fully-fledged assault, carried out by pseudo-authoritarians, on the general public’s “right-to-know,”  which holds that citizens have “the right to know what the government is doing on its behalf”. This assault is fuelled and justified by a populist narrative that journalists are part of an “elite” that seeks to mislead the “real” people of a nation. Its most common form is that of a multi-pronged assault that includes (but is not limited to): the changing of legislation to weaken public media; purchasing (and therefore controlling) national media organisations; creating parallel news agencies that recount a government-sanctioned version of the “truth”; mobilising campaigns of hate against dissident journalists.

These methods of attack come back to the original aim-come-justification: of creating a national sentiment against independent journalists that paints them as traitors against ordinary citizens. Panievsky notes that this form of attack is prevalent worldwide, having been pioneered by reactionary forces in Israel and spread across the globe, from Argentina to the United States, and from Europe to India.

While many journalists (such as Raviv Drucker), academics (countless academics worldwide, including in Hungary and the United States), and everyday citizens (like Abboud Battah) have noted, documented, and indeed experienced the hostile environment created by this populist New Censorship, there are two elements of Panievsky’s chronicle that make this book the definitive starting point for any future discussions on the subject. These are Panievsky’s positioning within the debate, and her proposals for fighting back.

Panievsky paints a convincing picture of Netanyahu’s Israel as a key originator of not only the methods, but also the rhetoric behind populist New Censorship.

The Netanyahu model of censorship

At the time of publication, Panievsky was working as an academic at the University of London, a position she earned following the completion of a highly regarded doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge. Perhaps a large part of Panievsky’s academic success stemmed from her frontline work within Israeli media and politics, both as a journalist holding power to account and as a member of the political establishment (albeit briefly).

Her journalistic experience is what gives her account of New Censorship its biggest boost. She employs it to paint a convincing picture of Netanyahu’s Israel as a key originator of not only the methods, but also the rhetoric behind populist New Censorship. Indeed, Panievsky frames Netanyahu as a point of inspiration for those who admire his building of an “illiberal democracy”, with his particular brand of attacking, discrediting, and attempting to isolate those that threaten his increasingly brazen attempts at solidifying power around himself being justified as “fighting back” against “traitors” to the nation and as those working to mislead ‘normal’ people. Notable alumni of his methods include Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, and (though not in power) Nigel Farage.

The book is grounded in this lived experience, as well as dozens of interviews with affected journalists, and carefully researched observations of populist attacks on the very foundations of journalism.

The book is grounded in this lived experience, as well as dozens of interviews with affected journalists, and carefully researched observations of populist attacks on the very foundations of journalism. This work is presented as a series of arguments and demonstrations that do not aim to establish a chronological history of the New Censorship, but rather to highlight and expose the various forms that it takes. This format is arguably a disadvantage, especially for future rather than contemporary readers. It does not provide its audience with enough background information to establish the necessary context behind, and the wide reach of, the New Censorship.

Active resistance to right-wing populism and censorship

The book presents a rather grim state of affairs, with pseudo-authoritarians solidifying control over liberal-democratic politics, bullying and successfully repressing journalists and other challengers of their power. Panievsky deems it too late to stop the rise of such trends – they are already here. But that doesn’t mean that this New Censorship cannot be challenged. The concluding chapter presents a series of “action points” that everyone, from journalists to everyday citizens can take to secure our collective “right-to-know”. These actions include, but are not limited to: campaigning for journalistic freedom, finding new ways of “belonging” that are not limited to nationality; financially or vocally supporting independent media; and challenging blatant misinformation.

This conclusion is the book’s greatest strength: its absolute rejection of defeatism, a sentiment that is sorely needed amongst liberals and leftists alike in our current age of rising right-wing populism

This conclusion is the book’s greatest strength: its absolute rejection of defeatism, a sentiment that is sorely needed amongst liberals and leftists alike in our current age of rising right-wing populism. This section transforms the book from a compelling read into an essential handbook for all those concerned over the rise of authoritarian politics, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum.

Panievsky’s clear-sightedness and drive to resist those forces that seek to restrict our collective “right-to-know” is admirable – so much so that it has motivated me into taking action myself, in ways where I can meaningfully have an impact. This includes getting more active in reporting and challenging misinformation when and where I see it, both online and offline. I am also trying my hand at citizen-journalism: essentially – using my academic credentials to challenge government over-reach into our private lives, and the lives of the most vulnerable among us. I also intend to pay for all the news that I read or watch when I can afford to, to help sustain the independent news outlets I rely on. These may seem like small steps, but the more people that take such measures to resist the New Censorship and the rise of authoritarianism, the better we can protect our right-to-know from those who are keen to keep us isolated and ignorant.

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: Jose HERNANDEZ Camera 51 on Shutterstock.

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