This is a valuable book that shows the strategic nuances that peripheral patronage states employ to navigate the complexities between international demands and the domestic electorate. Utilizing human rights and good governance to promote various political goals has gained significant attention in recent years (Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon, The Human Rights to Dominate, 2015; Clifford Bob, Rights as Weapons, 2019), yet Freeland brings to the fore conceptual tools that are potentially applicable to a wide range of case studies.

At the macro level, though not explicitly stated, the research largely aligns with ontological security theories where all actors, to various extents and with varying degrees of success, need to develop “strategic lies” (p. 225). However, Freeland goes well beyond this by digging deep into mezzo-level politics and, to a lesser extent, into the micro level of encounters that shape the reactions of ordinary people (such as combatants and victims of human rights violations). She places peripheral patronage states - where “legal oversight mechanisms are absent” (…), “business owners are defensive in their engagements with political parties” (…), and “local politicians are dominated by problem-solving, not policy discussion” (p. 25), at the core of her research. Those states are trapped between domestic imperatives and international pressures, hence, “patronage states at the global periphery must innovate to survive” (p. 40). Patronage states are placed in sharp (yet artificial) opposition to a Weberian bureaucratic state, and it is this gap between the two very different forms of governing that enables different outcomes in the international arena. Whereas IOs are placed within the democratic and bureaucratic mode of governance that requires transparency and well-defined procedures, patronage states, though often presenting procedures as window dressing, resort to informal and largely hidden ways of operating that depend on the loyalty of individuals and groups to the regime and the interpersonal exchange of various benefits and available resources. However, while Freeland highlights the importance of informal patronage-based logic throughout the book, the research would benefit from deeper anthropological insights into these practices, which are at the very core of anthropological research.

Freeland clearly points out that: “Governments that exert domestic power according to an informal patronage-based logic tend to be less legible to outside observers. The true rules of the game are never announced, and officials make decisions in response to a set of cues that are foreign to the bureaucratic order” (p. 55). Legibility here is understood as “the extent to which outsiders can identify and track the movement of important political resources within a society” (p. 56), where these resources rely heavily on informal networks and practices, claiming that once those informal practices become more prominent than the formal ones, “the society will be illegible to observers who only have close familiarity with formal institutions” (p. 56). This operational gap creates “asymmetrical interdependence” where “two actors” mutual ability to harm another’s interest in spite of great conventional power disparities between them (p. 249) produces a number of unexpected and often unintended strategic outcomes.

The book presents a number of possible strategic choices that peripheral patronage states apply to promote their own political interests, such as “recruiting” (a state uses international intervention to accomplish some tasks normally associated with state functions); and “insulting” (a state actively rejects outside influence, maintaining contentious domestic practices that conflict with international expectations even in the face of material repercussions). But most of the research is focused on “concealing” – “a strategy in which a state invites international intervention, aiming to gain approval for some domestic policy which would otherwise earn condemnation or even punishment” (p. 44). Concealing becomes possible only when wide patronage networks provide the regime enough capacity to hide its atrocities by maintaining obscure chains of responsibility that successfully mislead outsiders.

Three case studies are presented in the book that have all adopted the same strategy of concealing but with varying degrees of success. The first case examines Ugandan President Museveni’s strategic use of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to obscure his regime’s human rights violations during the Northern conflict. Despite his military committing atrocities potentially amounting to war crimes, Museveni invited ICC intervention to reframe military actions as efforts to prevent future crimes. This allowed him to sanitize ongoing violations and reinforce loyalty structures (p. 97, 99). Museveni maintained control through patronage networks, distributing resources to buy loyalty while silencing dissent by denying business licenses and imposing heavy taxes (p. 75). His regime carefully managed information, making it difficult for investigators to uncover the truth, and exploited its asymmetrical interdependence with the ICC to shield itself from scrutiny (p. 11, 81). The second case focuses on Sierra Leone under President Kabbah, who established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after the civil war. Although promoted as fostering reconciliation, the TRC concealed a de facto-targeted amnesty for regime allies while ensuring minimal accountability (p. 12). The process was stage-managed to exclude civil society activists and undermined the credibility of its findings (p. 123). Sierra Leone lacked Uganda’s cohesive patronage networks but exploited fragmented institutions and strong ties to Britain to shape international responses. Poor coordination between domestic law enforcement and justice mechanisms allowed the government to maintain stability while targeting specific actors (p. 138). Fears of state collapse gave Sierra Leone leverage, shielding the regime from external scrutiny (p. 145). The third case explores Georgia under President Saakashvili, whose bid to join the EU and NATO exposed his regime’s quasi-authoritarian practices. Genuine reforms increased state transparency, exposing governance violations (p. 147). While street-level bribery was eradicated, elite corruption persisted, and dissenters faced retaliation (p. 76). Unresolved disputes over South Ossetia and Abkhazia further hindered Georgia’s efforts to conceal its authoritarian tendencies, leaving its reforms incomplete and unconvincing (p. 172).

The main argument Freeland presents is ‘that the more vulnerable a state is to the international system, and the more it relies on informal modes of rule to maintain order, the less we can read its intentions from afar, and the more one must know about the specific threats and incentives it faces from within and without’ (p. 228). This claim opens up a debate on a range of interests and motivations employed in international relations. We see, for example, that states like Poland, Croatia, and Slovakia were keen to present human rights and good governance via joining the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) but once they were accepted by the EU, they largely abandoned those values. But it also opens a pandora’s box about the true motives and interests of both international and state actors. One can skeptically ask about the real and hidden motives behind South Africa and Ireland’s ICJ case against Israel, or Germany’s constraints to respond to atrocities committed by Israel as it is “bound by legitimating myths developing through and in response to long histories” (p. 65). In other words, this book breaks the myth of the morally righteous and norm-driven engagement of the international community and teaches us that interests often trump values and norms and are selectively applied only when they are compatible with the underlying political goals.