‘We live in a world full of exemplars, but far from an exemplary world, a contradiction that fuels these subtle and richly satisfying analyses of how aspirational models of people and forms might circulate. This nuanced bouquet of chapters brings together interdisciplinary approaches that reveal the types of social coordination that must exist for exemplars to emerge, circulate, and in turn structure future possibilities that people thus learn to find worthwhile. This collection is a vital starting point for all who want to understand a world built to enable exemplars to spark social change.’ Ilana Gershon, Rice University

Dorothy Noyes is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University.

Tobias Wille is Assistant Professor of International Security in the Department of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies.

Part I. Introduction

1. Theorizing Exemplarity for Global Politics ~ Dorothy Noyes and Tobias Wille

2. From Performance to Uptake: A Process Model of Exemplarity ~ Dorothy Noyes and Tobias Wille

Part II. Individuals and Inspiration

3. Gandhi’s Exemplarity ~ Ramachandra Guha

4. Tyrannicides, Tyrants, and Emperors: Exemplarity in the Graeco-Roman World ~ Fritz Graf

5. The Child Greta: The Exemplar as Embodied Future ~ Kyrre Kverndokk

Part III. The Complexities of Uptake

6. The Truths of Suffering and Injustice: Confucian Exemplarity in the History of Exemplar-Prisoners ~ Ying Zhang

7. The Exemplary Normativity of International Precedents ~ Christopher Daase and Tobias Wille

8. Exemplarity in Global Resistance: Beyond Epics and Romanticism ~ Iratxe Perea Ozerin

Part IV. Exemplary Orders

9. Exemplarity and Hierarchy ~ Ayşe Zarakol

10. The Violence of the Exemplar: The French Civilizing Mission in French and Algerian Memories, 1918-Present ~ Guillaume Wadia

11. Prototyping Events: Creating Child-Oriented Methods of Disaster Preparedness ~ Chika Watanabe

Part V. Trajectories

12. The Soft Power of a Small Country. Self-Perceptions of the Netherlands as a Model for Europe and the World ~ Robin de Bruin

13. Exemplary Appropriation: Holocaust Remembrance Practices in Post-Communist Europe ~ Jelena Subotić

14. From Exemplarity to Farce? The Career of Cold War Threshold Crossings ~ Dorothy Noyes

Part VI. Thinking with Examples

15. Salient Examples in Flawed Reasoning about International Politics ~ Jack Snyder

16. The Disciplinary Exemplarity of the Concert of Europe ~ Jennifer Mitzen

17. Conclusion: The Fragility and Persistence of Examples ~ Tobias Wille and Dorothy Noyes