Which elements of tyranny are paramount wax and wane across eras, but tyranny itself remains a consistent concern. In Western political thought, defining tyranny in one or two sentences is rare, and when undertaken, it is often embedded in a specific political context. Defining tyranny may appear straightforward; nonetheless, diagnosing and remedying it, enabling recovery and inoculation, requires more than a rigid definition. All governance orders display a range of features. For instance, no two democracies are alike, and the political, economic and social realities they serve must always be considered; the same is true of tyrannies.

Tyranny’s lengthy history in European debate lends itself to a linear narrative, and this chapter inserts, into that frame, debates over tyranny from archaic Greece to the contemporary era. Linearity often presents a false picture of continuity, progression and coherence, none of which can be bestowed upon tyranny. Rather, there are controversies and contingencies: the rise and fall of empires, the emergence of the Catholic Church, colonialism, constitutionalism, democracy and individual and collective roles contribute to contemporary tyranny’s complexity. Progressing through a history of Western thought – including its imperialism – highlights how changing attitudes towards governance affected accounts of tyranny. This account reveals how Roman hatred of monarchs, attitudes towards gender, the invention of race, the emergence of contemporary democracy and consequent concerns over majority tyranny demonstrate a consistent concern built into a European tyrannical theory subsequently projected onto the rest of the world.

Across the works of William Blake Urizen is at once Jupiter, Jehovah, an Assyrian warrior and George III.1 Urizen uses guises of temperance, prudence, justice, fortitude and, occasionally, madness, to preserve his power.2 Urizen employs an array of tyrannical techniques but in each manifestation is a tyrant. Orc confronts Urizen in each of these guises, challenging tradition and nostalgia with revolution and revival. But the cycle of tyranny and tyrannicide must end, and we only find a resolution in a new order unrestrained by nostalgia for former tyrannical structures. Nostalgia for a history ensconced in authority and power must be replaced by a broad and complex public sphere filled with contestation and a governance order that heeds and responds to those it governs. To end Urizen’s tyrannical authority, we must pose unaskable questions. This book has therefore posed one such question: does tyranny lurk within the global legal order? The answer is yes. International law is not uniquely immune from tyranny. But having made that determination, international law must remove itself from any nostalgia for its (tyrannical) past and entrench contestation into a novel structure that takes both the scale(s) of its operation and its embeddedness into the everyday lives of individuals as fundamental to its self-understanding.

Tyrannicide is a political act, which Ford describes as ‘a circle within a circle within a circle’ limited to striking down illegitimate, capricious or impious rulers and constitutes the ‘only respectable link between ethics and political violence’.1 It is parasitic in nature, being reliant on extant illegitimacy for its legitimacy. Its history is also subject to the history of tyranny and is nearly as old; as soon as archaic Greece came to regard tyranny as negative, tyrannicide became legitimate. This chapter also considers two other concepts: tyrannophobia and tyrannophilia. Tyrannophobia, as defined by Hobbes, is an under-identified but simmering presence in tyrannical discourse which impacts on the ability to diagnose tyranny’s presence. Tyrannophilia, as defined by Mark Lilla, describes the interrelationships between theoretical discourse and political support of tyranny. Much of this book focuses on those discussing tyranny, rather than tyrants and tyrannophilia, but this chapter locates the connections between them.

Scale, as a geopolitical concept, incorporates a range of ideas relevant to governance and tyranny. Issues of core and periphery, large and small populations, majorities and minorities, linear and non-linear temporality and physical size – vast and confined as well as local, national, regional, global and universal spaces – feature across debates on the causes of and potential preventative measures against tyranny. Scale is also interspersed across the other elements of tyranny. For instance, the extent of a bureaucracy and its distance from the individuals it regulates can heighten the potential for it to become tyrannical. This chapter uses scale both as an aspect of tyranny and as an iteration of other tyrannical elements to consider how they and international law interact and what this means for potential remedies to tyranny in the global order.

The English poet William Blake provides one of the keenest allegorical descriptions of tyranny. Urizen embodies reason and law using architects’ tools and nets to entrap society in webs of law and convention.1 Urizen believes himself holy and writes the law. The book of brass, brass being the metal of tyranny, forces peace through single rule.2 Urizen is also the creator of wrath and justice. Urizen binds people utilising law and convention to stultify imagination and rebellion. Orc, in contrast, embodies rebellion, revolution, passion and freedom, the very opposite of Urizen’s tyrannical god. But the two are intertwined.3 Urizen uses law to enforce reason, peace and oppression which Orc rebels against with creativity and revolution, but Orc also demonstrates a potential to descend into tyranny if Urizen’s tyrannical tools are not entirely discarded once he is overthrown.4 Blake’s complicated mythology mirrors tyranny’s complexity. Tyranny uses law and reason to establish that absolutism is necessary for peace. Tyrannicide recognises the necessity of rebellion, the false restraint of both rule by law and fear of anarchy, but, as such, tyrannicide is only legitimate if it does not replicate the tyranny it seeks to overthrow.

This chapter considers how Northern Ireland’s experience during and after Brexit informs our understandings of multi-level governance orders and interactions between and within those orders. A traditional view of governance structures would regard Northern Ireland as having little say in negotiations on trade. Nonetheless, the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement have repeatedly seen all parties refer to and return to governance in Northern Ireland as a core concern. This piece will utilise scale theory – originating in political geography – to consider how Northern Ireland became central to the Brexit negotiations.  Scale, as a geographical and political idea, incorporates a range of concepts (core and periphery, population size, majorities and minorities, temporality (linear and nonlinear), geographic governance size), as well as questions of local, national, regional and universal spaces to consider how governance is constructed and the role law plays in constructing scales. Whereas traditional accounts of scaled governance orders deploy “nested” constructs to place Northern Ireland in a tidy frame, organised like a series of Russian dolls, this chapter challenges this narrative by interrogating the slippage between the governance orders and their methods of interaction, and what extent of ‘voice’ that ultimately leaves for Northern Ireland.