Alternative Perspectives on Peacebuilding
This book analyses and furthers the academic debates on post-liberal peacebuilding, through a number of conceptual, theoretical and empirical research outputs. Part I includes a review of how the recent discourse on peacebuilding has evolved, and three conceptual/theoretical perspectives relevant to post-liberal peacebuilding. In particular, the editors propose the concept of bespoke peacebuilding to articulate key features of new peacebuilding models. Part II introduces five case studies that present how alternative peacebuilding models are being shaped (or can be shaped) in practice. Essential reading for scholars and students in Peace and Conflict Studies, International Relations, and International Security Studies. Chapter 8 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Between Mao and Gandhi
From Eastern Europe to South Africa to the Arab Spring, nonviolent action has proven capable of overthrowing autocratic regimes and bringing about revolutionary political change. How do dissidents come to embrace a nonviolent strategy in the first place? Why do others rule it out in favor of taking up arms? Despite a new wave of attention to the effectiveness and global impact of nonviolent movements, our understanding of their origins and trajectories remains limited. Drawing on cases from Nepal, Syria, India and South Africa, as well as global cross-national data, this book details the processes through which challenger organizations come to embrace or reject civil resistance as a means of capturing state power. It develops a relational theory, showing how the social ties that underpin challenger organizations shape their ability and willingness to attempt regime change using nonviolent means alone.
How Did Britain Come to This?
If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain? And how have they resulted in failures in housing, privatisation, outsourcing, education and healthcare? In How Did Britain Come to This? Gwyn Bevan examines a century of varieties of systemic failures in the British state. The book begins and ends by showing how systems of governance explain scandals in NHS hospitals, and the failures and successes of the UK and Germany in responding to Covid-19 before and after vaccines became available. The book compares geographical fault lines and inequalities in Britain with those that have developed in other European countries and argues that the causes of Britain's entrenched inequalities are consequences of shifts in systems of governance over the past century. Clement Attlee's postwar government aimed to remedy the failings of the prewar minimal state, while Margaret Thatcher's governments in the 1980s in turn sought to remedy the failings of Attlee's planned state by developing the marketised state, which morphed into the financialised state we see today. This analysis highlights the urgent need for a new political settlement of an enabling state that tackles current systemic weaknesses from market failures and over-centralisation. This book offers an accessible, analytic account of government failures of the past century, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to make an informed contribution to what an innovative, capable state might look like in a post-pandemic world.
The Middle East in Turmoil
The Middle East is a swirling cauldron of instability, insecurity and unrest. And right in the middle of this turmoil, the threats posed to smaller groups like Greeks of Cyprus and Azeri Armenians are growing by the day.In this book, author Aris Petasis asks the question - do hard-pressed small groups have a viable future in the Middle East?The Middle East in Turmoil is a thoughtful examination of how foreign interference and poor leadership have had a lasting and damaging impact on the region. Looking in detail at the ways violence, conflict and chaos have ravaged and changed the area, readers will gain a greater understanding of the challenges faced by the people living there.Born in Cyprus himself, Petasis offers an informed and considered perspective of what life is like for smaller Middle East groups, including the Greeks in Cyprus, the four Kurdish minorities, the minority populations in Lebanon, Egypt and Azerbaijan as well as Israeli Jews and Palestinians.With no end to the wars and conflicts in sight, can peace ever return to the Middle East? Or has living with the constant threat of danger on your doorstep simply become the new normal?
Change in Global Environmental Politics
As wildfires rage, pollution thickens, and species disappear, the world confronts environmental crisis with a set of global institutions in urgent need of reform. Yet, these institutions have proved frustratingly resistant to change. Introducing the concept of Temporal Focal Points, Manulak shows how change occurs in world politics. By re-envisioning the role of timing and temporality in social relations, his analysis presents a new approach to understanding transformative phases in international cooperation. We may now be entering such a phase, he argues, and global actors must be ready to realize the opportunities presented. Charting the often colorful and intensely political history of change in global environmental politics, this book sheds new light on the actors and institutions that shape humanity's response to planetary decline. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of international relations, international organization and environmental politics and history.
Digital International Relations
This book analyses how digital transformation disrupts established patterns of world politics, moving International Relations (IR) increasingly towards Digital International Relations.
Queer Diplomacy
This book is the first study of multilateral LGBT human rights diplomacy viewed from the perspective of its practitioners: diplomats, LGBT activists, human rights experts and multilateral specialists. It demonstrates how diplomats and advocates work to promote LGBT rights on the world stage, often using Western constructs of sexual and gender identity. In turn, these efforts have triggered conflict and polarization: opposing states often deploy cultural, religious and moral discourses to minimize LGBT rights as a "legitimate" human right. The author, a seasoned Canadian foreign service officer, human rights negotiator and former community activist and researcher, uses insider perspectives to critically assess both bilateral and multilateral diplomatic engagement on LGBT human rights issues. Janoff's research involved participation in UN meetings in Geneva and New York and 29 interviews with diplomats, human rights advocates and experts, and representatives from the UN and other inter-governmental organizations. Although LGBT issues have been mainstreamed into many areas of bilateral and multilateral human rights policy, his research found a considerable gap: a coordinated diplomatic and civil society approach is needed to more effectively address ongoing human rights violations against LGBT people around the world.
Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism
Pratt investigates the potential erosion of prohibiting assassination, torture, and mercenarism during the US's War on Terrorism. In examining the emergence and history of the US's targeted killing programme, detention and interrogation programme, and employment of armed contractors in warzones, he proposes that a 'normative transformation' has occurred, which has changed the meaning and content of these prohibitions, even though they still exist. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, practice theory, and relational sociology, this book develops a new theory of normativity and institutional change, and offers new data about the decisions and activities of security practitioners. It is both a critical and constructive addition to the current literature on norm change, and addresses enduring debates about the role of culture and ethical judgement in the use of force. It will appeal to students and scholars of foreign and defence policy, international relations theory, international security, social theory, and American politics.
Nation and Europe
This book of J獺nos Martonyi is a collection of essays and speeches addressing the reality gathering around us. It starts with a tribute devoted to International Law, European Law, and Hungarian Law. These three perspectives remain present in further texts as well, serving as outlook and angles of perception, while the focus is extending to history and culture. The author is shaping a true picture of the interplay of national and European identities on the fields (sometimes battlefields) of law, history, and culture.
Becoming International
When and how did the modern world become an international one? Jens Bartelson, a leading scholar of the history of international thought, provides new answers to this question by analyzing how relations between polities have been conceptualized across different historical contexts from the sixteenth century to the present day. A global intellectual history of the international system, this book challenges the widespread assumption that this system emerged as a result of a transition from empires to states, instead proposing that the international realm is but a continuation of imperial relations by other means. Showing how the international system spread through the creative appropriation of European concepts of nation and state by non-Europeans, Bartelson argues that this system has taken on a life of its own, to the point of becoming an empire in its own right.
Hero Projects
From Lenin and Stalin to Putin, Russia's economic development has relied on large scale technologies. These technologies--often called "hero projects," "projects of the century," or "megaprojects"--have been central to the nation's economic growth and military power. Despite their massive environmental and social costs, hero technologies moved ahead in service of the unbridled interests of state officials, the hubris of engineers, and the coalescence of the masses under a national ideology of glorious achievement and military grandeur. In Hero Projects, Paul R. Josephson traces how, over the last one hundred years, the Russian tsars, commissars, and oligarchs embraced megaprojects to create the world's largest empire. Built by peasants, gulag prisoners, and Communist volunteers, the wide-ranging projects--including pipelines across the tundra, railroads from Europe to the Pacific Ocean, hydropower stations and canals from the northwest to arid Central Asia, and nuclear facilities--forever altered the landscape, politics, and society. As Josephson argues, if hero projects were embraced by the public as showcasing technological wonder, they have always ultimately served to enrich the Kremlin and demonstrate the nation's technological prowess on the global stage. And they continue to be a major feature of authoritarian Russian political rule in the twenty-first century; having rebuilt Russia's resource state and pushed a self-proclaimed "renaissance" of nuclear weapons and reactors, Putin has determined in 2022 to expand the empire to its Soviet borders by war on Ukraine, in Crimea, and against Georgia and Moldova. Sweeping in scope, Hero Projects establishes the strong continuities in political culture in Russian history; reshapes the meaning of empire, extending it to include internal colonization; and expands environmental and social history through the study of big technology.
Russo-Ukrainian relations
The Russian army's special intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 has turned international relations upside down and led the world into a profound global crisis unprecedented after the Covid-19 pandemic. It is not only the continuation of more than three decades of political tensions between Russia and Ukraine, but also the continuation of some twenty years of geopolitical tensions between Russia and the West as well as the United States to the east of Ukraine. In this book, we examine the reasons for the new geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and also with NATO, including the geopolitical strategies of the major international powers in eastern Ukraine, characterized by neo-realism, which are disrupting international relations. It also raises the question of the legality and legitimacy of Russia's intervention in Ukraine, a burning issue in this war which I have taken the liberty of examining. Important recommendations have been made for a way out of the crisis, as well as ways and means to save humanity from a future hell.
Righteous Demagogues
Righteous Demagogues explores the causes, dynamics, and consequences of populist politics in South Asia and beyond. It argues that populist mobilizations are rooted in crises of representation, and populism is a symptom not an underlying cause of democratic malaise. Populist leaders, in framing their appeals, evoke the moral contract--that states are obligated to redress certain types of inequality--and promise its restoration, in ways that resonate with voters across lines of partisanship and social divisions, leading party system change. Depending on how broadly populist appeals resonate, different types of populism emerge, with consequences ranging from the rejection of populists to varying forms of democratic backsliding. The book examines the dynamics of populist politics primarily through four cases in South Asia. In the late 1960s, Indira Gandhi in India and Zulfiqar Bhutto in Pakistan effected reordering populist mobilizations on the left, against the de facto oligarchic regimes of the Congress party and the Ayub Khan government, mobilizing workers, peasants, and the nascent middle classes against widespread exclusion and inequity. In the mid-2010s, Narendra Modi and Imran Khan effected additive populist mobilizations of the right, mobilizing diverse middle classes across India and Pakistan respectively against perceived corruption and inequity. The book applies the framework and typology to explain the causes, dynamics, and consequences of populism in Latin America, Europe and the United States.
Elements of Deterrence
Global politics in the twenty-first century is complicated by dense economic interdependence, rapid technological innovation, and fierce security competition. How should governments formulate grand strategy in this complex environment? Many strategists look to deterrence as the answer, but how much can we expect of deterrence? Classical deterrence theory developed in response to the nuclear threats of the Cold War, but strategists since have applied it to a variety of threats in the land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then the diversity of technologies in modern war suggests a diversity of political effects. Some military forces or postures are most useful for "winning" various kinds of wars. Others are effective for "warning" adversaries of consequences or demonstrating resolve. Still others may accomplish these goals at lower political cost, or with greater strategic stability. Deterrence is not a simple strategy, therefore, but a complex relationship between many ends and many means. This book presents findings from a decade-long research program on "cross-domain deterrence." Through a series of theoretical and empirical studies, we explore fundamental trade-offs that have always been implicit in practice but have yet to be synthesized into a general theory of deterrence. Gartzke and Lindsay integrate newly revised and updated versions of published work alongside new work into a holistic framework for understanding how deterrence works--or fails to work--in multiple domains. Their findings show that in deterrence, all good things do not go together.
Governing After War
Governing After War explores how wartime processes affects post-war state-building efforts when rebels win a civil war and come into power. Post-war governance is a continuation of war--although violence has ceased, the victor must consolidate its control over the state through a process of internal conquest. This means carefully making choices about resource allocation towards development and security. Where does the victor choose to spend, and why? And what are the implications for ultimately consolidating power and preventing conflict recurrence? The book examines wartime rebel-civilian ties under rebel governance and explains how these ties--along with rebel governing institutions--shape the rebel victors' post-war various resource allocation strategies to establish control at the sub-national level. In turn, successfully balancing resources dedicated toward development and security helps the victor to consolidate power. The book relies on mixed-methods evidence from Zimbabwe and Liberia, combining interviews, focus groups, and archival data with fine-grained census, administrative, survey, and conflict datasets to provide an in-depth examination of subnational variation in wartime rebel behavior and post-war governing strategies. A comparison of Zimbabwe and Liberia alongside four additional civil wars in Burundi, Rwanda, C繫te d'Ivoire, and Angola further demonstrates the importance of wartime civilian tie-formation for post-war control. The argument's central insights point to war and peace as part of a long state-building process, and suggest that the international community should pay attention to sub-national political constraints that new governments face. Her findings offer implications for recent rebel victories and, more broadly, for understanding the termination, trajectories, and political legacies of such conflicts around the world.
Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era
Winner, International Communication Book Award, International Studies AssociationShortlisted, 2023 Susan Strange Best Book PrizeHonorable Mention, 2023 Information Technology and Politics Best Book Award Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era explores the role of digital advocacy organizations, a major new addition to the international arena. These organizations derive power and influence from their ability to rapidly mobilize members on-line and off-line, and are shaping public opinion on many issues including climate change, trade, and refugees. Research in international relations (IR) has highlighted the influence of non-governmental organizations, which wield power through their expertise and long-term, moral commitment to an issue. However, no IR scholars have explored the spread and power of digital advocacy organizations. Nina Hall provides a detailed investigation of how these organizations have harnessed digitally networked power and established new advocacy strategies. They can quickly respond to the most salient issues of the day, and mobilize large memberships, to put pressure on politicians. She finds that these organizations operate in a globalized world but tackle transnational problems by focusing on national targets. This new generation of activists have formed a strong transnational network, but still see the state as the locus of power.
Devolution in the UK
Covering the impact of austerity, Brexit, the Scottish Independence Referendum and the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive, this book discusses how wider national developments shape and are shaped by the process of devolution in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, assessing its impact on politics, policy and public administration. Drawing together extensive scholarship on devolution, Devolution in the UK compares the similarities and differences between the different devolved nations, and tackles key questions: - Where did devolution come from, and what does its future look like?- What are the most effective devolution systems, and what are their benefits?- Why does Wales have fewer devolved powers than Scotland and Northern Ireland?- What impact will Brexit have?- Why are national identities, symbols, languages, flags and culture so important? Spanning the introduction of devolution in 1988 to the present, this is essential reading if you are studying devolution, one of the country-specific political systems, or interested in UK politics as a whole.
Evaluating the Africa-Eu Partnership on Peace and Security
Interregional cooperation in peace and security as key feature of the EU external relations is particularly relevant in Africa-EU relations. However, these efforts have not been systematically evaluated to date. Focusing specifically on interregional peace operations, this volume provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the Africa-EU Partnership on Peace and Security. It explains the effectiveness of interregional security cooperation across three cases: (1) the AU-EU response in the Central African Republic (2013) and (2) in Somalia (2007-2017), (3) and the ECOWAS-EU efforts in Mali (2012). The book makes a valuable empirical, theoretical, and methodological contribution to EU foreign policy, comparative regionalism, and conflict studies.
Inside the Un Security Council
UN Security Council decisions impact billions of people and yet its formal rules are minimal and tell us little about how decisions are made. Instead, informal, and often unwritten practices, form the basis of negotiations. Inside the UN Security Council analyses informal practices within Security Council decision-making, both in general and focused on the case of Darfur in the west of Sudan, to pull back the curtain on decision-making. Security Council negotiations on Darfur are analyzed in depth across issue areas of agenda-setting, sanctions, referral to the International Criminal Court, and peacekeeping. One way of understanding these informal practices is via the lens of legitimation. This is a useful approach because it brings to the fore the ways in which states seek legitimacy for themselves, and for Security Council decisions, as part of the negotiation process. Inside the UN Security Council introduces and develops the concept of legitimation practices to analyse the UN Security Council's decision-making. Legitimation practices shape the process and outcome of negotiations in two different ways. Internal legitimation practices, which relate to the legitimation of Security Council decisions, such as prioritizing unanimity, constrain and enable the text of resolutions. External legitimation practices such as 'doing something', even when it is known that it cannot be implemented, relate to the legitimation of actors in the negotiations and shape whether decisions can be reached at all. Foregrounding legitimation practices sheds light on seemingly contradictory moments within Security Council decision-making, such as the United States enabling the referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court, despite its longstanding objections to the court and the capacity to veto the decision. The book draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including original interviews with key decision-makers, to show that legitimation practices are an integral aspect of Security Council negotiations.
Wuhan
The definitive account of the Chinese government's response to the initial Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. The Covid-19 pandemic, which began as an outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, has claimed millions of lives and caused unprecedented disruptions. Despite its generation-defining significance, there has been a surprising lack of independent research examining the decisions and measures implemented in the weeks leading up to the Wuhan lockdown, as well as the missteps and shortcomings that allowed the novel coronavirus to spread with minimal hindrance. In Wuhan: How the COVID-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control, Dali L. Yang scrutinizes China's emergency response to the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, delving into the government's handling of epidemic information and the decisions that influenced the scale and scope of the outbreak. Yang's research reveals that China's health decision-makers and experts had an excellent head start when they implemented a health emergency action program to respond to the outbreak at the end of December 2019. With granular detail and compelling immediacy, Yang investigates the political and bureaucratic processes that hindered information flows and sharing, as well as the cognitive framework that limited understanding of the virus's contagiousness and hampered effective decisions. Yang's research uncovers that urgent warnings from sources outside Wuhan helped shift the Chinese health leadership's focus towards epidemic control. Once this shift occurred, China's party-state mobilized resources and enforced a lockdown in Wuhan. This lockdown was divided into two phases: providing additional medical resources and enforcing community-level lockdowns and home confinement. The 76-day lockdown contained the virus within China's borders, but the leadership and public later faced the challenge of reopening China in a world still grappling with SARS-CoV-2. Wuhan: How the COVID-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control also critiques the Chinese authorities for prioritizing dominance and control in their response to the Wuhan outbreak. This preoccupation led to the suppression, distortion, and neglect of crucial disease information, fostering an atmosphere of organized silence. The punishment of whistleblowers and the banning of the immediate release of research findings on the novel coronavirus further contributed to this silencing. Yang emphasizes the importance of retaining public trust during a pandemic and underscores the need for transparency, openness to new information, and direct communication of risk with the public.
The Ripple Effect
Many studies of China's relations with and influence on Southeast Asia tend to focus on how Beijing has used its power asymmetry to achieve regional influence. Yet, scholars and pundits often fail to appreciate the complexity of the contemporary Chinese state and society, and just how fragmented, decentralized, and internationalized China is today. In The Ripple Effect, Enze Han argues that a focus on the Chinese state alone is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of China's influence in Southeast Asia. Instead, we must look beyond the Chinese state, to non-state actors from China, such as private businesses and Chinese migrants. These actors affect people's perception of China in a variety of ways, and they often have wide-ranging as well as long-lasting effects on bilateral relations. Looking beyond the Chinese state's intentional influence reveals many situations that result in unanticipated changes in Southeast Asia. Han proposes that to understand this increasingly globalized China, we need more conceptual flexibility regarding which Chinese actors are important to China's relations, and how they wield this influence, whether intentional or not. The Ripple Effect makes the case that to understand China's relationship with Southeast Asia, it is necessary to move beyond a narrow fixation on the Chinese state by scrutinizing the ordinary manifestations of China's presence in the region and recognizing the multifaceted web of actors and their effects on the dynamics between the two regions.
Building a Human Security Diplomacy
This book examines Canada's foreign policy in terms of China, pointing to the flaws and attitudes relating to the impracticality and lack of its pragmatic design. We examine the historical and contemporary problem which these states face in terms of their economic, political, and social differentials to see what they have in common, what separates them, and how and why they can overcome these political and social divisions. Our aim is to provide solution-based strategies to the very substantial, diplomatic, and foreign policy dilemmas which exist between these two countries. We begin with an overview and analysis of the fraught diplomatic and economic relations between Canada and China, particularly exacerbated during the global pandemic. Secondly, we look at these problems and how they might be resolved through developing a human security lens, in particular the idea of what we call a 'human security diplomacy' framework which we believe can advocate and support Canadianvalues while offering a strategic tool for strengthening national interests in the short and long term. Finally, we look to the future of Canada-Chinese relations emphasizing an optimistic outlook while offering recommendations on how the relationship can be reimagined.
The Unfinished Quest
In The Unfinished Quest, T.V. Paul charts India's checkered path toward higher regional and global status, and sheds important light on its significance as the "swing power" that can mitigate China's aggressive rise in the Indo-Pacific region. In 2022, India surpassed the United Kingdom, its former colonial ruler, as the fifth largest economy in the world. Since the 1990s, a series of US presidents and secretaries of state have all acclaimed India as a rising major power that deserves to be recognized as a lead actor in the international arena. All five permanent members of the UN Security Council except China have openly acknowledged the need to include India among their ranks. But even now, India has not attained the status of a globally recognized great power. In The Unfinished Quest, leading international relations and South Asia scholar T.V. Paul charts India's checkered path toward higher regional and global status, covering both the successes and failures it has experienced since the modern nation's founding in 1947. Paul focuses on the key motivations driving Indian leaders to enhance India's global status and power, but also on the many constraints that have hindered its progress. He carefully specifies what counts as indicators of greater status and uses these as benchmarks in his assessment of each era. In this manner, he also brings forth some important insights on status competition and power transitions in the contemporary international system. Paul's analysis of India's quest for status also sheds important light on the current geo-strategic situation and serves as a new framework for understanding the China-India rivalry, as well as India's relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater. As the economies of China and India grow rapidly, the power balance between them will be determined by each country's ability to develop the hard and soft powers needed to outpace the other and solidify their place in the global hierarchy. Whether India can be a "swing power" able to mitigate China's aggressive rise depends on its relative power position in that theater and its own evolution as an inclusive, tolerant democracy that can develop and utilize its most priced asset, the demographic dividend. This sweeping account of India's uneven rise in the global system will serve as the authoritative work on the subject.
Structural Power in the Global Age
In light of recent global trends and crises, including the hasty withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, this book sheds new light on global power shifts in multiple areas of international relations between industrialized countries and emerging powers. This book argues that "the global age" is rapidly supplanting "the modern age", and that modernity is paving the way for globality. The events that are taking place in the 21st century can no longer be effectively described, understood or explained by the concept of modernity which originated more than 500 years ago. Further, this book challenges the academic and societal tendency to view international power-related phenomena on the basis of a dichotomy between hard and soft power. It assumes that another power source, independent of hard and soft power, does exist. Invisible, structure-manipulating, and effectively leveraged, it is precisely this "third power" that drives and shapes power phenomena in the "global age" more intensively than either hard or soft power. This book seeks to verify its core hypotheses by applying them to a set of selected global phenomena, particularly from the domains of geopolitics (Belt & Road Initiative, Iran conflict, war in Afghanistan, and competition for a new world order) and technology (Global Navigation Satellite Systems, 5G infrastructure, race for international standards, and ICT rivalry). Rather than systematically examining each of these issues, it focuses on extracting theoretical meanings from these cases to demonstrate the logic of globality and structural power, partly from global-horizontal perspectives, partly through a structural-vertical lens.
Observing Conflict Escalation in World Society
How do conflicts escalate? This is one of the major questions in conflict research. To offer further answers, Richard B繹sch follows a tripartite agenda: First, he develops a constructivist methodology for the study of conflict escalation embedded in a Luhmannian systems theoretical world society perspective. B繹sch argues that conflicts can be observed as social systems and he looks at the process of conflict escalation by analysing communication. Second, this analysis offers two case studies: the Maidan protests in Ukraine 2013-2014 and Mali's crisis 2010-2012. Third, it gives insights on how systems theoretical research can be beneficial for Peace and Conflict Studies.
The European Integration, Vol. 1
This two-volume textbook teaches about the uniqueness and the difficulty of the European unification project. It describes, as clearly as possible, what Robert Schuman declared in 1950, that "... Europe will not be made all at once...". Navigating the nexus of four academic fields - political science, institutional analysis, economics, and history - the book serves as a reference work for accurate, exhaustive, and well-researched information on the creation and functioning of the European Union. Supported by numerous photographs, diagrams, maps, and sources, volume 1 sets out in a concise and readable way the European historical origins, the important steps in the creation of the European Union, and the treaties and historical events that have marked its course so far. Providing a comprehensive picture of the unification process and the functioning of this sui generis edifice of a united Europe, the book will serve as an essential textbook for undergraduate and graduate students studying the subject of European integration, as well as a useful resource for a broader audience interested in the European integration process.
The Social Evolution of World Politics
How can we understand long-term change in world politics better? Based on readings of thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Foucault and Luhmann, the authors of this book propose a framework for understanding such change in terms of social evolution. They show that processes of social learning and unlearning are key to understanding the long-term historical evolution of complex societies, and propose to approach these with the core concepts of autonomization, hierarchical complexity, and co-evolution. Three case studies illustrate this social evolutionary perspective to the study of world politics, examining the evolution of forms of organizing political authority, of conflicts, of diplomacy, of law as boundary condition.
Europe in an Era of Us-China Strategic Rivalry
This volume examines some of the major challenges and opportunities for Europe in the light of the intensifying US-China global strategic rivalry. In doing so, the book investigates European roles and behavior in the contemporary US-China-Europe triangular relationship. While the book's focus is on Europe, the contributors originate from, or are based in, the US and China, thus presenting a unique outside-in perspective to the analysis of European conduct in the areas of security, geo-politics, geo-economics, global governance, development, and climate change. Each area is investigated by one American and one Chinese scholar, respectively, presenting the different views held on Europe's behavior and positioning in the US and China. In addition to providing critical assessments of Europe's roles and performance as seen through the prism of their respective country, contributors also pose concrete policy recommendations for Europe.The book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of political science and international relations, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of Europe's role in the US-China rivalry and its relationship to the two countries.
Local Government in the Soviet Union
Local Government in the Soviet Union (1987) analyses the Soviet Union's limited success in improving local government. It examines the institutional framework and changes in crucial policy areas, and argues that a fragmented vertical power structure was unproductive.
The Foreign Policy of Russia
The seventh edition of this classic text traces the lineage and development of Russian foreign policy with the insight that comes from a historical perspective and a contemporary interpretation.
Collisions
One war: three collisions--in this vividly written, narrative history of the war in Ukraine, Michael Kimmage puts together the pieces of a complicated international puzzle to understand the origins of the current conflict that has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, a historian and former State Department official who focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, offers a wide-angle, historically informed account of the origins of the current Russia-Ukraine war. Tracing the development of Ukraine and Russia's fractious relationship back to the end of the Cold War, Kimmage takes readers through the central events that led to Vladimir Putin seizing a large portion of Ukraine--the Crimea--in 2014 and, eight years later, initiating arguably the most intensive military conflict of the entire post-World War II era. From the halls of power in Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow to the battlefields of Ukraine, Kimmage chronicles Putin's ascendancy to the Russian presidency, delves into multiple American presidencies and their dealings with Russia and Europe, and recounts Europe's efforts to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union. He tells the story of how Ukraine went from an embattled country on the edge of Europe to a formidable military power capable of pushing back the Russian military. Just as importantly, Kimmage captures how the current war has transformed multiple centers of power--from China to the United States--and dramatically altered the path of globalization itself. He makes the case that the war in Ukraine has shifted the direction of major macro-trends in world politics, contributing to the fragmentation of international politics, higher inflation, greater food insecurity, and the general collapse of arms control. These intersecting dangers amount to a new age of global instability, born in war and in the collision between Russia and the United States that has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. An authoritative interpretation of possibly the most important geopolitical event of the post-Cold War era, Collisions is essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of this epochal conflict and its ripple effects across the globe.
The Greek-Turkish Maritime Dispute
The study provides an extensive legal, geopolitical and historical analysis of all controversial issues making up the Greek-Turkish maritime dispute: the delimitation of territorial waters, the national airspace, the delineation of exclusive economic zones and continental shelf as well as the issue of military presence on the Eastern Aegean islands and its relation to the Greek sovereignty over them. By immersing thoroughly into international jurisprudence, international treaties and historical facts, the book offers a detailed survey of legal precedents and legal regimes over similar issues worldwide. In this way, the reader has the opportunity to ascertain where every single legal and historical argument has been drawn from and its relevance in the international jurisprudence. Consequently, it follows the evolution of the dispute together with all its twists from 1973 to 2022 that saw a new low in the historically tense Greek-Turkish relationship. The book finally re-examines the dispute in the light of the new green energy geopolitics and the ongoing climate crisis and comes up with some suggestions for an alternative paradigm of co-existence in the Aegean Sea which in the author's view is urgent and inevitable.
Patterns of News Consumption in a High-Choice Media Environment
Based on a Romanian case study, this book sheds light on the supply and demand of news and information in the current digital era, dominated by unprecedented dramatic changes. In addition to identifying patterns of journalistic reporting and news consumption, the book offers a thorough approach to how the classic theories in media and communication studies can be reinterpreted in the current attention economy and media abundance paradigm. The research data included in this book provide a snapshot of media consumption patterns and encompass experts' views and predictions about how media habits and diets might evolve.The book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars of media and communication studies, political communication, and journalism, as well as practitioners interested in a better understanding of news consumption patterns in a high-choice media environment.
Regionalism in Africa and External Partners
This volume offers systematic research on regionalism in Africa and explores the role and impact of external partners on the dynamics, institutional design, and performance of regional integration projects. It acknowledges and elaborates the multilevel and multidimensional nature of regionalism, with its variety of cooperative institutions and policy areas, while closely considering uneven relationships to external actors in African regional organizations. The book's two comprehensive mapping studies examine patterns of asymmetric inter-dependence between regionalism in Africa and external partners in Europe, with a focus on trade and donor funding, and highlight structural imbalances and (un)intended consequences. Five additional case studies provide in-depth analyses of a variety of African regional organizations, mainly with a focus on security regionalism, and elaborate how external partners influence and affect integration processes and projects. Although regionalism in Africabenefitted from external relations and partnerships with Europe, contributions in this volume question this positive impression, highlighting some of the major undermining factors and actors.
The Political Economy of Climate Finance: Lessons from International Development
This project breaks disciplinary silos by bringing those who work in climate finance and policy together with development scholars and practitioners to share lessons, understanding, and research with an overall goal of making a contribution to the climate change field so that those at the community level benefit from the multitude of programmes designed for climate impacts. For some 70 years, International Development specialists have been developing programs and delivering funds to those who most need assistance. There is a wealth of knowledge to be uncovered by examining the international development industry for those who are now tasked with delivering climate finance. The academic, policy, and practitioner communities have spent decades researching, examining, and analyzing both development policies and finance independent of each. This volume will seek to bring that research together.
Canadian Defence Policy in Theory and Practice, Volume 2
This edited volume, the second volume in this collection, provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates and issues in Canadian defence policy studies. The contributors examine topics including sexual misconduct and the crisis of defence culture, personnel retention in the CAF, the impacts of climate change, NORAD modernization, policy trade-offs in the wake of the war in Ukraine, defence spending, procurement, as well as the defence policy making process.
The Legitimacy of Drone Warfare
This book examines public perceptions of the legitimacy of drones, and how this affects countries' policies on and the global governance of drone warfare.Scholars recognize that legitimacy is central to countries' use of drones, and political officials often characterize strikes as legitimate to sustain their use abroad. This book introduces and tests an original middle-range theory that allows scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners to understand how evolving patterns of drone warfare globally shape the public's perceptions of legitimacy that can moderate countries' drone policies and the global governance of drones. Rather than relate drone warfare to a platform or counterterrorism strikes only, as experts often do, this book argues that drone warfare is best understood as a function of the unique ways that countries use and constrain strikes. By updating theories of drone warfare, this book provides a generalizable way to understand public perceptions of legitimacy in cross-national contexts, especially among democratic political regimes that are prefigured on political officials' accountability for the use of force abroad.This book will be of interest to students of security studies, foreign policy, media and communication studies, and International Relations.
The Cold War Past and Present
The Cold War Past and Present (1987) analyses the generally antagonistic postwar relations between the Soviet Union and the West, particularly America. Following the uneasy wartime alliance, Russia's tightening grip on Eastern Europe and the Berlin Blockade ushered in the first of the several 'cold wars'.
African Perspectives on Global Pandemics and the Challenges of Peace and Security
African Perspectives on Global Pandemics and the Challenges of Peace and Security by Masake Pilisano Harris and Richard Obinna Iroanya dissects the effects of pandemics in Africa and the possibilities for countering pandemic outbreaks in the future. The contributors of this volume bring new perspectives on the legal and security challenges of pandemics, covering political, socio-economic, health, security, and legal facets of pandemics nationally and regionally. This book discusses essential topics including: securitization, state behavior and actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health and political measures during pandemics, the amplification of the insecurities in African states, the increase of crime and criminality related to pandemic challenges, and the economic impacts that surround pandemic outbreaks. Harris and Iroanya bring these thematic areas to light not only to comprehensively analyze countermeasures towards pandemics in Africa, but also to encourage security policies that reflect the multidimensional nature of state authority and functions to tackle the next outbreak more affectively.
The Burden-Sharing Dilemma
The Burden-Sharing Dilemma examines the conditions under which the United States is willing and able to pressure its allies to assume more responsibility for their own defense. The United States has a mixed track record of encouraging allied burden-sharing--while it has succeeded or failed in some cases, it has declined to do so at all in others. This variation, Brian D. Blankenship argues, is because the United States tailors its burden-sharing pressure in accordance with two competing priorities: conserving its own resources and preserving influence in its alliances. Although burden-sharing enables great power patrons like the United States to lower alliance costs, it also empowers allies to resist patron influence. Blankenship identifies three factors that determine the severity of this burden-sharing dilemma and how it is managed: the latent military power of allies, the shared external threat environment, and the level of a patron's resource constraints. Through case studies of US alliances formed during the Cold War, he shows that a patron can mitigate the dilemma by combining assurances of protection with threats of abandonment and by exercising discretion in its burden-sharing pressure. Blankenship's findings dismantle assumptions that burden-sharing is always desirable but difficult to obtain. Patrons, as the book reveals, can in fact be reluctant to seek burden-sharing, and attempts to pass defense costs to allies can often be successful. At a time when skepticism of alliance benefits remains high and global power shifts threaten longstanding pacts, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma recalls and reconceives the value of burden-sharing and alliances.
The New Crusades
"The New Crusades is an intersectional milestone. It lucidly illustrates how converging systems of subordination, power, and violence related to Islamophobia are experienced across the globe."--Kimberl矇 Crenshaw, from the foreword "A profound wake-up call."―Publishers Weekly "Insightful and disturbing."―Library Journal The first book to examine global Islamophobia from a legal and ground-up perspective, from renowned public intellectual Khaled A. Beydoun. Islamophobia has spiraled into a global menace, and democratic and authoritarian regimes alike have deployed it as a strategy to persecute their Muslim populations. With this book, Khaled A. Beydoun details how the American War on Terror has facilitated and intensified the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding across the world. The New Crusades is the first book of its kind, offering a critical and intimate examination of global Islamophobia and its manifestations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and regions beyond and in between. Through trenchant analysis and direct testimony from Muslims on the ground, Beydoun interrogates how Islamophobia acts as a unifying global thread of state and social bigotry, instigating both liberal and right-wing hate-mongering. Whether imposed by way of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the network of concentration camps in China, Islamophobia unravels into distinct systems of demonization and oppression across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Lucid and poignant, The New Crusades reveals that Islamophobia is not only a worldwide phenomenon--it stands as one of the world's last bastions of acceptable hate.
Reappraising Modern Indian Thought
Reappraising Modern Indian Thought: Themes and Thinkers is a lucid and comprehensive account of the thread of socio-political thought of major Indian thinkers over the decades. In contrast to the existing texts on the subject, it explores the social and political conditions that formed the basis of political thinking of the thinkers in the past two centuries. The book begins with a detailed discussion on the development and articulation of socio-political thought that have evolved in modern India. It then goes to give a comprehensive coverage and makes an analysis of great thinkers of modern India, namely Rabindranath Tagore, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose, Abul Kalam Azad, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Syed Ahmed Khan, and Muhammad Iqbal. Divided into four thematic sections; Ideal-Humanist Thought, Militant-Extremist Thought, Cultural-Revivalist Thought and Radical-Pragmatist Thought -- the chapters on such thinkers not only talks about their lives and times but also discusses and examines the contributions of those to contemporary period.This multi-authored compendium has contributions from professionals and experts of the subject from different premier universities of India and it will be an indispensable and immensely helpful basic text to students, researchers, academicians as well as for general readers across India and also abroad who will take interest to develop a critical understanding of the modern Indian thinkers on the issues such as colonialism, India's freedom struggle, nationalism, nation building, economic reconstruction, education, democracy, secularism, socialism, integral and universal humanism.
What's Going On?
What's Going On? is written for Canadians who find themselves questioning the world we live in, the laws we live under, and the decisions of the politicians that lead us.The book is divided into two segments. The first segment explores the many ways the author believes that common sense has gone out the window, covering geopolitics, healthcare, political party alliances, gun ownership regulations, and government legislation. In the second segment of the book, the author pulls us into a fictional dream that portrays an alternative reality that includes extensive gun ownership and increased autonomy in protecting oneself and one's neighbours.Cherneski does not hold back from critical analysis of current and past government leaders, stating tough realities and asking tougher questions. Jerry Cherneski holds a master's degree in Educational Leadership. Raised in a small town in Saskatchewan, he spent his professional years in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where he resides still today. Jerry was not only a teacher for more than 30 years, he was also a long-time coach in the sports of football, hockey and curling
New Zealand's Foreign Policy Under the Jacinda Ardern Government: Facing the Challenge of a Disrupted World
The purpose of this book is to examine the foreign policy of Jacinda Ardern's New Zealand Government between 2020 and early 2023 when the COVID-19 pandemic intersected with an evolving and often tumultuous post-Cold War global environment. This context witnessed the erosion of an international rules-based order and the renewal of great power competition. In particular, the Indo-Pacific has become a contested strategic space, which impacted on New Zealand's foreign policy interests.As a self-proclaimed small state, New Zealand faced distinct challenges: the Ardern Government formulated a distinctive foreign policy that drew on the success of its handling of the pandemic as well as Aotearoa New Zealand's indigenous values, and emphasised the importance of a good international reputation, strong diplomatic networks, and multilateral cooperation to maintain and grow its influence.This interdisciplinary volume brings together academics, policymakers and practitioners and provides essential reading for anyone interested in how relatively small states such as New Zealand can navigate significant foreign policy challenges in an increasingly complex and contested system of international relations.
Youth and Non-Violence in Africa's Fragile Contexts
This book makes an important contribution to the conflict literature and to new ways of thinking about agency and social life in fragile contexts. It does this by engaging with often ignored peace infrastructures. In this book, the contributors highlight different ways in which non-violence is deployed by Africa's youth to navigate difficult violent contexts. Drawing on empirically grounded case studies from the Central African Republic to Zimbabwe, this book explores how similar (or indeed the same) social infrastructures can be deployed for both violence and non-violence and the important factors that drive many youth to take the non[1]violence option even when order appears to collapse around them. The authors also explore how, for instance, systems of organizing survive violent disruptions to the so-called rhythms of everyday life, and, when they do, how they are then repurposed by youth to help them survive violence.
Devolution in the UK
Covering the impact of austerity, Brexit, the Scottish Independence Referendum and the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive, this book discusses how wider national developments shape and are shaped by the process of devolution in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, assessing its impact on politics, policy and public administration. Drawing together extensive scholarship on devolution, Devolution in the UK compares the similarities and differences between the different devolved nations, and tackles key questions: - Where did devolution come from, and what does its future look like?- What are the most effective devolution systems, and what are their benefits?- Why does Wales have fewer devolved powers than Scotland and Northern Ireland?- What impact will Brexit have?- Why are national identities, symbols, languages, flags and culture so important? Spanning the introduction of devolution in 1988 to the present, this is essential reading if you are studying devolution, one of the country-specific political systems, or interested in UK politics as a whole.
Youth Political Participation in Greece: A Multiple Methods Perspective
The overarching aim of this edited volume is to investigate different modes, patterns and determinants of youth political participation in Greece, since the economic crisis, by incorporating a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods. The chapters examine different forms of youth political participation, from institutionalized (such as voting, or membership in political parties) to non-institutionalized (such as signing petitions, protesting through demonstrations or occupations, and political consumerism). Moreover, the chapters shed light on diverse aspects of youth political participation, such as the interlinkages between occupational precarity and political behaviour, the spatial portrait of youth political engagement in rural, suburban and urban Greek contexts, the engendered aspects of political involvement, the pivotal role of protest events in youth political socialization and in mobilization in contentious political actions, the different impacts of priming inequality on youth's political beliefs, depending on different modes of thinking, as well as the key features of youth-related and youth-led (non-state) organisations operating in Greece. The aforementioned aspects are examined at the micro, meso or/and macro level through distinct methodological approaches including panel survey, experimental survey, biographical interviews, in-depth interviews and action organization analysis, carried out in the context of the EURYKA (European Commission) project.
