New Books In Political Science

In Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets (Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Nikhil Kalyanpur examines a striking feature of today's global legal order: the use of foreign courts by elites to settle domestic disputes. On the surface, the "outsourcing" of disputes by elites from countries with fragile judiciaries looks like a search for fair treatment unavailable at home. Yet extraterritorial dispute resolution varies across such countries. Russian plutocrats, for instance, frequently litigate abroad, whereas Chinese and South African ones rarely do. Dr. Kalyanpur argues that the pursuit of extraterritorial litigation depends on the balance of power between a state and its plutocracy. In contexts of state capture or state control, the transparency costs associated with transnational law deter plutocrats from seeking resolution abroad. But when the state and the plutocracy have relatively equal power, competing interests can lead to political clashes