Charles Tilly is currently the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. He has also taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, and the New School for Social Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow and former member of both the Midwest Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences. Charles Tilly is the author of many books, including three recently published by Cambridge University Press: Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000, Dynamics of Contention (with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow) and The Politics of Collective Violence.

People rely on networks of strong ties to other people for a wide range of risky long-term activities such as marrying, raising children, sustaining distinctive religions, and carrying on long-distance trade. What happens when those networks confront political regimes that could regulate them, destroy them, or seize their assets? Trust and Rule uses a wide range of historical and contemporary evidence to map and explain different sorts of encounters between networks and political authorities, including their implications for democracy.