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The conclusions summarize the main results. In particular, neither the Marx' reserve army mechanism nor mass unemployment as a disciplining device, as in Kalecki's work, are necessary for the functioning of a capitalistic system. The introduction of minimum and maximum real wages can attenuate the negative consequences of booms and recessions provided that markets, including the labor market, are sufficiently flexible implying that employers must not be constrained in their hiring and firing decisions. Further, lower and upper bounds for real wages can be seen as one ingredient of a flexicurity economy that intends to overcome the conflict between capital and labor. Thus, flexicurity capitalism can be considered as a Western type of competitive socialism, as envisaged by Schumpeter, that does not only successfully solve the coordination problem but also the incentive problem in the principal-agent scenario.

This is the second of three chapters that set out the differing contexts through which the dilemma in the laws of war over the distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants can be viewed: political and diplomatic (Chapter 1), social (this chapter) and intellectual (Chapter 3). It explores the social history of army occupation and resistance to it in nineteenth century Europe – from the Napoleonic period to the Franco-Prussian war– and places these diplomatic failures in their broader social and political context. In particular it examines the range of army practices under occupation, and the effect that they had on civilian life. The different sections of the chapter discuss: pillaging, looting, requisitions and billeting; reprisals; hostage-taking; types of civilian behaviour –obedience to the occupier, political and armed acts of resistance, organized acts of resistance –guerrillas and franc-tireurs; levee en masse and other assorted insurrections; ideologies of resistance; religion as a source of resistance; and the influence of nationalism and patriotism.

This chapter focuses on the three arguments that seek to explain why states stopped using mercenaries in the 19th century. The first argument is largely realist, making the case that material changes pressured states to adopt citizen armies. The second argument is based more on the role of ideas, arguing that the developing relationship between states and citizens and the increasing role of neutrality in international law combined to render the use of mercenaries obsolete. The third argument suggests that while ideas and material pressures are important antecedent conditions, the change to a citizen army is best explained by domestic politics and path dependency.

Assesses the success of the two humanitarian interventions in the Balkans – Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999 – from the perspective of humanitarian organizations. It argues how, ironically, the effectiveness of organizations such as UNHCR can dissuade powerful states from taking the necessary steps to address the root causes of massive human rights violations. Slow and ambiguous action from the international community can raise false expectations on the part of suffering civilians, and embolden those who commit atrocities. The author argues that the political, military, and humanitarian strands of interventions are always closely interwoven, and draws a series of lessons from the Balkans experience: the need for the international community to act early, credibly, and consistently; the importance of preserving the identity of a humanitarian operation; the imperative to end the impunity of those who orchestrate and commit massive violations of human rights; and the importance of engaging the United Nations.

Chapter 7 and the corresponding Ch. 12 in Part Three of the book present the Antifederalist objections to a stronger national government in the “fiscal‐military” sphere, with this chapter looking closely at Antifederalist objections to the military clauses of the US Constitution. The opponents of the Constitution never accepted the Federalist claim that the independence, liberty, and prosperity of the American republic depended on the creation and maintenance of a peace establishment consisting of regular troops, and did not believe that the union faced as serious threats as the Federalists claimed, keeping to the view that standing armies in time of peace were a threat to liberty. Both ancient and modern history had taught that “almost all” nations in Europe and Asia had lost their liberty because of the establishment of a standing army, so it hardly made sense for Americans to imitate them. To Antifederalists, it seemed that if the military clauses of the Constitution were adopted and the Federalists realized their plan to raise a standing army, the people of America would soon find that the Constitution's supporters would make use of it on the domestic rather than the international scene. The Antifederalist criticism of the army clauses therefore said little about commercial treaties and the importance of military strength in international relations; instead, they approached the issue from the traditional British Country perspective, claiming that standing armies in time of peace posed a threat to liberty, that transfer of military power from the states to Congress threatened both the state militia and the state assemblies, and that a standing army would make it possible for the national government to deprive people of their property without their consent by levying and collecting arbitrary taxes – in other words, a standing army in a time of peace was to the Antifederalists an objection to the centralization of power at the expense of the people's ability to withhold consent through their control of strong local institutions.

Chapter 8 and the corresponding Ch. 13 in Part Three of the book show how the Federalists responded to the Antifederalist objections to a stronger national government in the “fiscal‐military” sphere, thereby creating an understanding of the kind of state that was proper to American conditions. In their defense of the military clauses of the US Constitution, the Federalists argued for the need to maintain a peace establishment of regulars, also arguing that the national government had to possess an unrestricted power over mobilization; in Federalist minds, both military professionalism and the unlimited power over mobilization were necessary to preserve the independence, liberties, and interests of the American nation. The Antifederalists, by contrast, raised objections to the right of Congress to create and maintain a standing army in time of peace, and were also concerned about the unrestricted nature of Congress's military powers. Their objections can be subsumed under three headings: first, they believed that the new system of government would change the administration of the laws from an administration based on the consent of the governed to an administration based on coercion or the threat of force; second, they believed that the national government would create a large army while neglecting the state militia, so that as a consequence, the national government would become independent of the people and be able to establish tyrannical rule; and third, the critics of the Constitution believed that Congress had been granted too much power to interfere in the private lives of the citizens through its command over the militia. In the debate over ratification, the Federalists answered these objections, and in doing so, they argued that it was possible to create a strong state without abandoning traditional Anglo‐American ideals about free government; their answers are the subject of this chapter.

This is the second of three chapters on the three traditions of war, and introduces the Groatian tradition, which is viewed as the most dominant and powerful of the traditions presented, and had as its primary source the Dutch diplomat, lawyer, poet, mathematician, theologian, and historian, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). The objective of the chapter is to analyse this ideology, and show how its principles came to underpin the later Grotian rationale for the legal distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants. The chapter begins by evoking the inherently enigmatic qualities of Grotius and the numerous (and often conflicting) traditions that he inspired; next the distinct properties of the Grotian tradition of war are set out and seen to consist of a singular legal discourse, a pluralist method, and a strong attachment to order and power. The core components of this ideology are then examined with reference to Grotian conceptions of human nature, government, and liberty; these elements are shown to provide the necessary foundations of Grotius’ conception of war, and in particular to inform the priority accorded to the rights of states and armies over those of civilian populations. The final section of the chapter examines how this ideology informed the practices and beliefs of the founders of the modern laws of war; these ideological changes highlight the adaptability of this tradition as it developed at the end of the nineteenth century, and defined the dominant paradigm of the laws of war.