The nucleus of society is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. The contributors look at such configurations in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of the modern Western world with its particular development of society and statehood: in Antiquity and in the Global South of the present. Here states tend to be weak, with obvious challenges and opportunities for local communities. How does governance in this context work? Scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Theology, Political Science, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human Geography, Sinology) analyze different kinds of local arrangements in case studies, and they do so with a comparative approach. The sixteen papers examine the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; its legitimization and the collective identity of the groups behind them; the relations to different levels of state governance as well as to other local groups. Overall, this volume makes an interdisciplinary contribution to a better understanding of fundamental elements of local governance and statehood.

How did a Late Roman emperor stay on the throne? His position was always precarious, and in contrast to a modern hereditary monarch he could always lose power or even his life to a usurper. The Eastern emperors resided in Constantinople from 395 to 624 without a break. This book shows how they sought the support of the army, the populace, the clergy and the capital s elite, how they gained it, and how they sometimes lost it. The result is a new picture of the socio-political system of Constantinople and of the Late Roman Empire in general."