Available open access digitally under CC-BY licence.

How is political change claimed and recognized? How is it attached to actors and transferred between them? This volume gives a new account of a mechanism that is celebrated in liberal discourse but trickier in practice: the performance and uptake of examples.

Bringing together thinkers from different disciplines and places, this book considers the networks of reception and emulation within which a political act can become an example, circulating beyond the bounds of identities, norms, and ideologies. Tracing short- and long-term interactions among aspirational, dissident, and establishment performances, the volume reveals exemplarity to be a shaping force in global politics.