The price of writing a book is the accumulation of a great many personal debts. David Laitin shepherded this project from its gestation to its comple- tion. He continues to be a source of great inspiration. This book began as a PhD dissertation at Stanford and my committee members there—David, Jean Oi, Jonathan Rodden, Jeremy Weinstein, and Aliya Saperstein all left their mark on this book in different ways. I am grateful for their individual and collective support. The MERNers in Stanford Sociology, including Aliya, Tomás Jiménez, Jackie Hwang, Jasmine Hill, Beka Guluma, Kim Higuera, Elisa Kim, Marlene Orozco, and Corey Fields, were a fabulous intellectual community and pushed the book to its completion during the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other Stanford faculty including Ken Schultz, Ken Scheve, Lisa Blaydes, Beatriz Magaloni, Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Vicky Fouka, and Paula Moya also offered much support. I thank Lisa and Paula for inspiring me to be much more intellectually ambitious, historical, and theory-driven. Felicity McCutcheon and Mark Philp also deserve much credit for my intel- lectual growth prior to Stanford and so I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank them both.