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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Comparative politics
How do dictators stay in power? When, and how, do they use repression to do so? Dictators and their Secret Police explores the role of the coercive apparatus under authoritarian rule in Asia - how these secret organizations originated, how they operated, and how their violence affected ordinary citizens. Greitens argues that autocrats face a coercive dilemma: whether to create internal security forces designed to manage popular mobilization, or defend against potential coup. Violence against civilians, she suggests, is a byproduct of their attempt to resolve this dilemma. Drawing on a wealth of new historical evidence, this book challenges conventional wisdom on dictatorship: what autocrats are threatened by, how they respond, and how this affects the lives and security of the millions under their rule. It offers an unprecedented view into the use of surveillance, coercion, and violence, and sheds new light on the institutional and social foundations of authoritarian power.
Europeans use 'social models' to refer to the combination of
welfare state, industrial relations, and educational institutions
jointly structuring what we can think of as the supply-side of the
labor market. The dominant view in controversy over the social
models has been that in the name of equity they have impaired the
labor market's efficiency, thereby causing unemployment. But doubt
is cast on this supply-side-only diagnosis by powerful
macroeconomic developments, from the Europe-wide recession
following Germany's post-unification boom to the deepest economic
crisis since the interwar Great Depression, which the Eurozone's
truncated economic governance structure transformed into a
sovereign debt crisis, threatening the Euro's and even EU's very
survival. This book explores the interaction of Europe's diverse
social models with the major developments that shaped their
macroeconomic environment over the quarter century since the fall
of the Berlin Wall. It concludes that this environment rather than
the social models are primarily responsible for the immense social
costs of the crisis.
That the publics of Western democracies are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their political institutions is part of the conventional wisdom in Political Science. This trend is often equated with the expectation that all forms of political attachment and participation show similar patterns of decline. Based on empirical underpinnings derived from a range of original and sophisticated comparative analyses from Europe and beyond, this collection shows that no such universal pattern of decline exists. Nor should it be expected, given the diversity of reasons that citizens have to place or withdraw trust, and to engage in conventional political participation or in protest. Contributers are: Christoph Arndt, Wiebke Breustedt, Christina Eder, Manfred te Grotenhuis, Alexia Katsanidou, Rik Linssen, Michael P. McDonald, Ingvill C. Mochmann, Kenneth Newton, Maria Oskarson, Suzanne L. Parker, Glenn R. Parker, Markus Quandt, Peer Scheepers, Hans Schmeets, Thoralf Stark, and Terri L. Towner.
Why do we need European integration in increasingly fragmented and antagonised European societies? How can European integration relate to the national stories we carry about who we are as a nation and where we belong? What to do with the national stories that tell traumatising tales of past loss and sacrifice, and depict others as villains or foes? Can we still claim that our national states are the most legitimate way of organising European political communities today? Engaging with these big questions of European politics, Nevena Nancheva tells a small story from the periphery of Europe. Looking at two post-communist Balkan states - Bulgaria and Macedonia - she explores how their narratives of national identity have changed in the context of Europeanisation and EU membership preparations. In doing so, Nancheva suggests that national identity and European integration might be more relevant than previously thought.
Punishing the Black Body examines the punitive and disciplinary technologies and ideologies embraced by ruling white elites in nineteenth-century Barbados and Jamaica. Among studies of the Caribbean on similar topics, this is the first to look at the meanings inscribed on the raced, gendered, and classed bodies on the receiving end of punishment. Dawn P. Harris uses theories of the body to detail the ways colonial states and their agents appropriated physicality to debase the black body, assert the inviolability of the white body, and demarcate the social boundaries between them.,br> Noting marked demographic and geographic differences between Jamaica and Barbados, as well as any number of changes within the separate economic, political, and social trajectories of each island, Harris still finds that societal infractions by the subaltern populations of both islands brought on draconian forms of punishments aimed at maintaining the socio-racial hierarchy. Her investigation ranges across such topics as hair-cropping, the 1836 Emigration Act of Barbados and other punitive legislation, the state reprisals following the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, the use of the whip and the treadmill in jails and houses of correction, and methods of surveillance, policing, and limiting free movement. By focusing on meanings ascribed to the disciplined and punished body, Harris reminds us that the transitions between slavery, apprenticeship, and post-emancipation were not just a series of abstract phenomena signaling shifts in the prevailing order of things. For a large part of these islands' populations, these times of dramatic change were physically felt.
This book addresses one of the enduring questions of democratic government: why do governments choose some public policies but not others? Political executives focus on a range of policy issues, such as the economy, social policy, and foreign policy, but they shift their priorities over time. Despite an extensive literature, it has proven surprisingly hard to explain policy prioritisation. To remedy this gap, this book offers a new approach called public policy investment: governments enhance their chances of getting re-elected by managing a portfolio of public policies and paying attention to the risks involved. In this way, government is like an investor making choices about risk to yield returns on its investments of political capital. The public provides signals about expected political capital returns for government policies, or policy assets, that can be captured through expressed opinion in public polls. Governments can anticipate these signals in the choices they make. Statecraft is the ability political leaders have to consider risk and return in their policy portfolios and do so amidst uncertainty in the public's policy valuation. Such actions represent the public's views conditionally because not every opinion change is a price signal. It then outlines a quantitative method for measuring risk and return, applying it to the case of Britain between 1971 and 2000 and offers case studies illustrating statecraft by prime ministers, such as Edward Heath or Margaret Thatcher. The book challenges comparative scholars to apply public policy investment to countries that have separation of powers, multiparty government, and decentralization.
This book discusses five cases of hatred politics on the margins of global capital: Turkey under Erdogan (assumed office in 2003), Hungary under Orban (assumed office in 2010), India under Modi (assumed office in 2014); the Philippines under Duterte (assumed office in 2016) and Brazil under Bolsonaro (assumed office in 2019). How did they come to power? What strategies of legitimation do they employ? What resistances do they face? Country case studies lay the foundation for a systematic comparison that illuminates the key dynamics of this novel political form. Analyses of their responses to the Covid-19 pandemic further shed light on their methods in a time of crisis and a chapter that considers the Trump presidency indicates how we can understand these leaderships given their pronounced counterpart in the Global North - and vice-versa. This is not a mere collection of texts commissioned from specialists, but the result of a two-year-long collective endeavor: an international taskforce to respond to a global phenomenon. Contributors are: Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos, Daniel Feldmann, Agnes Gagyi, Daniel Geary, Tamas Gerocs, Sefika Kumral, Cecilia Lero, Devika Misra, Ilhan Can Ozen and Aparna Sundar.
Federal systems are praised for creating political stability, but
they are also blamed for causing rigidity. They are said to balance
powers, but apparently they are also threatened by instability due
to drifts in power. Federalism should support democratization, but
it can also constrain the power of the demos and strengthen the
executive. In short, there is widespread agreement that federal
systems are dynamic. The forces, mechanisms and consequences of
federal dynamics, however, are not sufficiently understood so far.
This book comparatively assesses the China and India's soft power strategy in Iran. By employing Joseph S. Nye's "Soft Power" theory and forming the new concept of "Power of Bonding", this book formulated China and India's soft power narratives and applied it through the empirical analysis in Iran. Based on this theory, this book seeks explanations for the question of "How China and India respectively, strategically and comparatively use the soft power strategy in Iran?". To reach the find-out, this book compares the understanding, resources, strategies, influences and uses of China and India's soft power in Iran under three thematic areas, including "power of bonding through cultural attractions, and attributions"; "political and diplomatic engagement" and "economic partnerships". By analysing China and India's soft power strategy in Iran, this book seeks to contribute to the soft power literature through a theoretical replication based on non-Western soft power strategy, the concept and its empirical application in China and India.
Since the 1920s, Socialist and Communist parties in Europe and elsewhere have engaged in episodes of both rivalry and cooperation, with each seeking to dominate the European Left. Enemy Brothers analyzes how this relationship has developed over the past century, focusing on France, Italy, and Spain, where Socialists and Communists have been politically important. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews in all three nations, W. Rand Smith identifies the critical junctures that these parties faced and the strategic choices they made, especially regarding alliance partners. In explaining the parties' diverse alliance strategies, Enemy Brothers stresses the impact of institutional arrangements, party culture, and leadership.
The advent of the all-volunteer force and the evolving nature of modern warfare have transformed our military, changing it in serious if subtle ways that few Americans are aware of. Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy, this stimulating volume brings together insights from a remarkable group of scholars, who shed important new light on the changes effecting today's armed forces. Beginning with a Foreword by former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, the contributors take an historical approach as they explore the ever-changing strategic, political, and fiscal contexts in which the armed forces are trained and deployed, and the constantly shifting objectives that they are tasked to achieve in the post-9/11 environment. They also offer strong points of view. Lawrence Freedman, for instance, takes the leadership to task for uncritically embracing the high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs when "conventional" warfare seems increasingly unlikely. And eminent psychiatrist Jonathan Shay warns that the post-battle effects of what he terms "moral wounds" currently receive inadequate attention from the military and the medical profession. Perhaps most troubling, Karl Eikenberry raises the issue of the "political ownership" of the military in an era of all-volunteer service, citing the argument that, absent the political protest common to the draft era, government decision-makers felt free to carry out military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich goes further, writing that "it's no longer our army; it hasn't been for years; it's theirs [the government's] and they intend to keep it." Looking at such issues as who serves and why, the impact of non-uniformed "contractors" in the war zone, and the growing role of women in combat, this volume brings together leading thinkers who illuminate the American military at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The fading of the post-WWII order called for Turkey to take on a new role in this new multi-centered and multipolar era with new players emerging from different regions across the globe. The new enterprising and humanitarian foreign policy is an effort to locate Turkey better in the 21st global politics. While the literature on principles of Turkish foreign policy is abundant, the actual mechanisms by which these principles are implemented in practice are still ambiguous to most scholars and foreign policy practitioners especially within the country's newly developed Turkish foreign policy framework. This edited volume directs to shed light on this little-explored aspect of Turkish foreign policy. By critically analyzing several cases from different geographical locations, this volume explains why Turkey developed a new foreign policy framework, and by which mechanisms this new foreign policy framework has been implemented around the world. This volume also critically explores how the new Turkish foreign policy framework customizes its tools and capacities in various international regions around the world.
Although there has been a lot written about how counter-terrorism laws impact on human rights and civil liberties, most of this work has focussed on the most obvious or egregious kinds of human rights abrogation, such as extended detention, torture, and extraordinary rendition. Far less has been written about the complex ways in which Western governments have placed new and far-reaching limitations on freedom of speech in this context since 9/11. This book compares three liberal democracies - the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, in particular showing the commonalities and similarities in what has occurred in each country, and the changes in the appropriate parameters of freedom of speech in the counter-terrorism context since 9/11, achieved both in policy change and the justification for that change. In all three countries much speech has been criminalized in ways that were considered anachronistic, or inappropriate, in comparable policy areas prior to 9/11. This is particularly interesting because other works have suggested that the United States' unique protection of freedom of speech in the First Amendment has prevented speech being limited in that country in ways that have been pursued in others. This book shows that this kind of argument misses the detail of the policy change that has occurred, and privileges a textual reading over a more comprehensive policy-based understanding of the changes that have occurred. The author argues that we are now living a new-normal for freedom of speech, within which restrictions on speech that once would have been considered aberrant, overreaching, and impermissible are now considered ordinary, necessary, and justified as long as they occur in the counter-terrorism context. This change is persistent, and it has far reaching implications for the future of this foundational freedom.
Political Action Committees (PACs) are a prominent and contentious feature of modern American election campaigns. As organizations that channel money toward political candidates and causes, their influence in recent decades has been widely noted and often decried. Yet, there has been no comprehensive history compiled of their origins, development, and impact over time. In The Rise of Political Action Committees, Emily J. Charnock addresses this gap, telling a story with much deeper roots than contemporary commentators might expect. Documenting the first wave of PAC formation from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, when major interest groups began creating them, she shows how PACs were envisaged from the outset as much more than a means of winning elections, but as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties. In doing so, Charnock not only locates the rise of PACs within the larger story of interest group electioneering - which went from something rare and controversial at the beginning of the 20th Century to ubiquitous today - but also within the narrative of political polarization. Throughout, she offers a full picture of PACs as far more than financial vehicles, showing how they were electoral innovators who pioneered strategies and tactics that came to pervade modern US campaigns and reshape American politics. A broad-ranging political history of an understudied American campaign phenomenon, this book contextualizes the power and purpose of PACs, while revealing their transformative role within the American party system - helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today.
Nationalist movements remain a force in contemporary American politics, regardless of political party. Recently, social issues have moved to the forefront of American society, and civilian participation in activism is at an all time high. The nationalism that the world started to experience pre-2016, but much more intently post-2016, has impacted international alliances, global strategies, and threatened the fragile stability that had been established in the post-September 11th world. Major political events in more recent times, such as the American election, have brought social issues into stark focus along with placing a spotlight on politics and nationalism in general. Thus, there is an updated need for research on the most current advances and information on nationalism, social movements, and activism in modern times. Global Politics, Political Participation, and the Rise of Nationalism: Emerging Research and Opportunities discusses the ways in which nationalism and nationalist ideologies have permeated throughout America and the international community. This work considers the rise of neo-nationalism stemming from the Tea Party in the United States, Brexit and the era of the Tory Divorce from Europe, contemporary electoral politics that are helping in the spread of nationalist policies and leaders (providing a normalization of policies that are sometimes anti-democratic), the 2020 resurgence of Black Lives Matter after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the role of the coronavirus pandemic in helping to shape the world order to come. This book will be ideal for activists, politicians, lawyers, political science professors and researchers, international relations and comparative politics professors and students, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and anyone interested in the current state of global politics, nationalism, and activism in political participation.
The Impact of Innovation on Globalization is the eighth volume of the series China in the World. Like other volumes in the series, this volume includes views of leading Chinese scholars on China's relations with other countries and regions in the world. In view of the theme of "globalization" in this volume, the contributors in this volume pay attention to how the Covid-19 pandemic impacts and challenges globalization, especially how it affects China, the United States, and their mutual relations. However, this is not to say that some issues surrounding globalization-the orientation and interrelationship of political and economic decision-making in China and the United States-have emerged only after the outbreak of the pandemic. The volume focuses on some long-term trends and innovations, from the past to the future. Chapter 2, "Globalization, Convergence, and China's Economic Development," describes the patterns of globalization. Chapter 3, "The Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation is Unstoppable," talks about views on current economic and financial issues. Chapter 4, "Reconstructing Global Industrial Chains under the Pandemic, and China's Response," discusses China's pivotal position in global supply chains. Besides answering these basic questions, the book investigates other important issues, such as Global Value Chains, Changes in the International Order, Changes in the International Economic Landscape, WTO Reform, China's Foreign Economic and Trade Strategies, Towards a Climate Resilience Society, Identity Politics, and the AI "Revolution".
This book theorizes Chinese politics, specifically about China's "deliberative democracy (xieshang minzhu )". Creating a China-West comparative framework, the author interrogates China's government's claims to give representation to citizens, allowing readers to see how all of these concepts interact within Chinese ideology, democratic discourse, and governance, and their relationship with Chinese authoritarianism. Above all, this book represents a sustained hybridization of political theory, one which is neither a simple democratic-authoritarian dichotomy, nor a reinterpretation of the official propaganda. This study will interest scholars of Chinese politics and statecraft, shedding light on an emergent discourse of the state - Chinese xieshang minzhu. More importantly, this book goes beyond a simple rhetorical and linguistic use of 'deliberative democracy' in the Western sense, and rather emphasizes the very consultative nature of Chinese politics, which facilitates and reconsolidates Chinese authoritarianism.
AN IMPORTANT BRANCH OF EUROPEAN CIVIL LAW. Origianlly published:
Grahamstown, Cape Colony: African Book Co., 1908. iv (new
introduction), xv, 791 pp. With a New Introduction by Michael
Hoeflich, John H. & John M. Kane Professor of Law, University
of Kansas School of Law. Roman-Dutch law is a hybrid of medieval
Dutch law, mainly Germanic in origin, and Roman law as defined by
the Corpus Juris Civilis and its later reception. It was developed
in Holland during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Bynkershoek, Damhouder, Grotius and other Roman-Dutch
jurists had a profound influence on the development of European
civil law and were the primary source of civil-law study in
America. The Dutch brought it to their colonies, most notably South
Africa and Indonesia, and it became the basis of their
post-colonial legal systems. This engagingly written history offers
a thorough analysis of Roman-Dutch jurisprudence and its
intellectual background. Wessels devotes a great deal of attention
to its literature, and he analyzes several treatises at length.
Valuable as an introduction to one of the most important legal
systems in history, it is equally useful as a reference.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab world has undergone a series of radical transformations. One of the most significant is the resurgence of activist and puritanical forms of religion presenting as viable alternatives to existing social, cultural and political practices. The rise in sectarianism and violence in the name of religion has left scholars searching for adequate conceptual tools that might generate a clearer insight into these interconnected conflicts. In Striking from the Margins, leading authorities in their field propose new analytical frameworks to facilitate greater understanding of the fragmentation and devolution of the state in the Arab world. Challenging the revival of well-worn theories in cultural and post-colonial studies, they provide novel contributions on issues ranging from military formations, political violence in urban and rural settings, trans-regional war economies, the crystallisation of sect-based authorities and the restructuring of tribal networks. Placing much-needed emphasis on the re-emergence of religion, this timely and vital volume offers a new, critical approach to the study of the volatile and evolving cultural, social and political landscapes of the Middle East.
After the end of the Cold War, it seemed as if Southeast Asia would remain a geopolitically stable region within the American imperious for the foreseeable future. In the last two decades, however, the re-emergence of China as a major great power has called into question the geopolitical future of the region and raised the specter of renewed of great power competition. As the eminent China scholar David Shambaugh explains in Where Great Powers Meet, the United States and China are engaged in a broad-gauged and global competition for power. While this competition ranges across the entire world, it is centered in Asia, and in this book, Shambaugh focuses the ten countries that comprise Southeast Asia. The United States and China constantly vie for position and influence in this enormously significant region-and the outcome of this contest will do much to determine whether Asia leaves the American orbit after seven decades and falls into a new Chinese sphere of influence. Just as importantly, to the extent that there is a global "power transition" occurring from the US to China, the fate of Southeast Asia will be a good indicator. Presently, both powers bring important assets to bear. The US continues to possess a depth and breadth of security ties, soft power, and direct investment across the region that empirically outweigh China's. For its part, China has more diplomatic influence, much greater trade, and geographic proximity. In assessing the likelihood of a regional power transition, Shambaugh at how ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the countries within it maneuver between the United States and China and the degree to which they align with one or the other power. Not simply an analysis of the region's place within an evolving international system, Where Great Powers Meet provides us with a comprehensive strategy that advances the American position while exploiting Chinese weaknesses.
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