This book tackles the perennial debate about whether presidentialism is associated with democratic breakdown. We integrate both institutional and behavioral arguments to discuss how institutional rigidity in changing executive power would stimulate citizens to adopt relatively violent means to address their grievances. Evidence from cross-national surveys is collected, and the results show that our central premises are indeed supported. We then employ a cross-national time-series data from 1946 to 2008 to examine the conditions in which a democracy enters into a crisis, and the conditions in which a crisis escalates into a democratic breakdown. Although the book finds evidence that presidentialism could contribute instabilities to a democratic system, it does not directly follow that those instabilities will trigger a democratic breakdown. In other words, presidential democracies are more likely to encounter crises than either parliamentary or semi-presidential systems. However, once a crisis occurs, presidentialism does not trigger a higher likelihood of a breakdown. The conventional wisdom is thus only half correct.

In summer 2014, US agencies responsible for the border with Mexico were overwhelmed by tens of thousands of unaccompanied children arriving from Central America. Unprepared to address this unexpected kind of migrant, the US government deployed troops to carry out a new border mission: the feeding, care, and housing of this wave of children. This event highlights the complex social, economic, and political issues that arise along borders. In American Crossings, nine scholars consider the complicated modern history of borders in the Western Hemisphere, examining borders as geopolitical boundaries, key locations for internal security, spaces for international trade, and areas where national and community identities are defined. Among the provocative questions raised are, Why are Peru and Chile inclined to legalize territory disputes through the International Court of Justice, undermining their militaries? Why has economic integration in the "Tri-Border Area" of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay increased illicit trade supporting transnational terrorist groups? And how has a weak Ecuadorian presence at the Ecuador-Colombia border encouraged Colombian guerrillas to enforce the international borderline?

This book is open access under a CC BY license. In this book, Nika Gilauri reveals his formulas for government reform and economic recovery, including how to fight against corruption, reform fiscal policy and tax systems, privatize state-owned enterprises, build a welfare system for those most in need, create a competitive education and healthcare system, and streamline procurement. All formulas are corroborated by practical experience and empirical evidence gathered during Mr Gilauri's term as a cabinet member (2004-2009) and prime minister (2009-2012) of Georgia, and provide an in-depth view of what worked in the case of Georgia since 2003, and how lessons learned could be applied in other parts of the world.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of eugenics in North America focused on the second half of the twentieth century. Based on new research, Randall Hansen and Desmond King show why eugenic sterilization policies persisted after the 1940s in the United States and Canada. Through extensive archival research, King and Hansen show how both superintendents at homes for the 'feebleminded' and pro-sterilization advocates repositioned themselves after 1945 to avoid the taint of Nazi eugenics. Drawing on interviews with victims of sterilization and primary documents, this book traces the post-1940s development of eugenic policy and shows that both eugenic arguments and committed eugenicists informed population, welfare, and birth control policy in postwar America. In providing revisionist histories of the choice movement, the anti-population growth movement, and the Great Society programs, this book contributes to public policy and political and intellectual history.

This book begins a series of publications devoted to political reflection on the integration of Central and Eastern Europe with the participation, or even under the aegis, of Poland. The attempts to make it happen have lasted from the late nineteenth to the outset of the twenty-first century. The idea of organized order in the central and eastern part of the continent that aimed to ensure the security of Poland and stability of the region, took various forms: from Pilsudski's federation concept through the Intermarium and the idea of Giedroyc's ULB to the Three Seas Initiative promoted by Poland in recent years. The vitality and diversity of this idea is undoubtedly a historical phenomenon, which has become the subject of analyses of well-known Polish historians and political scientists in this volume.

This publication discusses economic relations connecting Poland with other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In order to clarify this matter, the authors began with a methodological outline, and then presented an analysis of economic history and trade relations in the region. They also took up the subject of geo-economics and cooperation models in Central Europe. The outline is complemented by an analysis of the role of the most important Polish figures of economic life and their economic concepts of cooperation with neighbours. These issues constituted an extremely important aspect of the twentieth century integration proposals, which also have significance today.

This book makes an original and readable contribution to defining the nature of justice in the aftermath of a repressive regime. While considering transitional justice as conventionally defined, this work explores broader conceptions of justice and is distinct in approaching the subject through a discussion of the lives and works of six writers: Victor Serge in Stalinist Russia, Albert Camus in Vichy France, Jorge Semprun in Spain under Franco, Ngugi wa Thiong'o in colonial and post-colonial Kenya, Ariel Dorfman in Chile under Pinochet, and Nadine Gordimer in apartheid South Africa. Each lived under a brutal regime, was prepared to take substantial risks in order to contribute to its overthrow, and survived a transition to a new regime. Each thought deeply about the evolving situation with viewpoints derived from a combination of lived experience and intellectual and artistic creation. Each illuminated key questions with reference to a particular country, while developing wider insights.Newman demonstrates that their writings provide a valuable addition to academic analysis and external policy advice that too often fails to take sufficient account of reflective understanding, social and cultural context and the specificity of each situation. He also highlights the evolving and multi-dimensional nature of justice and injustice in political transitions.

Representation in Congress provides a theory of dyadic policy representation intended to account for when belief sharing, delegate, responsible party, trustee, and 'party elite led' models of representational linkage arise on specific policy issues. The book also presents empirical tests of most of the fundamental predictions for when such alternative models appear, and it presents tests of novel implications of the theory about other aspects of legislative behavior. Some of the latter tests resolve contradictory findings in the relevant, existing literature - such as whether and how electoral marginality affects representation, whether roll call vote extremism affects the re-election of incumbents, and what in fact is the representational behavior of switched seat legislators. All of the empirical tests provide evidence for the theory. Indeed, the full set of empirical tests provides evidence for the causal effects anticipated by the theory and much of the causal process behind those effects.

This book explores civil-military relations in Asia. With chapters on individual countries in the region, it provides a comprehensive account of the range of contemporary Asian practices under conditions of abridged democracy, soft authoritarianism or complete totalitarianism. Through its analysis, the book argues that civil-military relations in Asia ought to be examined under the concept of 'Asian military evolutions.' It demonstrates that while Asian militaries have tried to incorporate standard, western-derived frameworks of civil-military relations, it has been necessary to adapt such frameworks to suit local circumstances. The book reveals how this has in turn led to creative fusions and novel changes in making civil-military relations an asset to furthering national security objectives.

A stunningly novel account of why populism and fascism are on the rise in the early 21st century. Today we find in the most technologically advanced societies, wild conspiracy theories and a broad distrust of science and expertise have created deep political divisions that are splitting nations in two. Defensive Nationalism explains this paradox, using history as a guide. B. S. Rabinowitz finds that the turn-of-the 19th century was also a period of exceptional technological innovation that ended with toxic political upheavals. To investigate why, the author combines Karl Polanyi's concept of the "double movement" with Joseph Schumpeter's theory of innovation. Weaving together a fascinating narrative that spans two centuries, the book traces how the rapid transformation of transportation and communications during the Industrial Revolution and the Digital Revolution created economic interdependence and capital flows that induced radical economic, social, and political disruptions. In response, separate national-populist movements, stemming from particular national histories and struggles, arose concurrently to produce an era of "defensive nationalism." Distinguishing between creative, consolidating, and defensive nationalism, Rabinowitz offers a persuasively fresh way to study socio-political patterns across time and space.

In Politics as a Science, two of the world's leading authorities on Comparative Politics, Philippe C. Schmitter and Marc Blecher, provide a lively introduction to the concepts and framework to study and analyze politics. Written with dexterity, concision and clarity, this short text makes no claim to being scientific. It contains no disprovable hypotheses, no original collection of evidence and no search for patterns of association. Instead, Schmitter and Blecher keep the text broadly conceptual and theoretical to convey their vision of the sprawling subject of politics. They map the process in which researchers try to specify the goal of the trip, some of the landmarks likely to be encountered en route and the boundaries that will circumscribe the effort. Examples, implications and elaborations are included in footnotes throughout the book. Politics as a Science is an ideal introduction for anyone interested in, or studying, comparative politics. "The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781003032144, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license."

This edited book aims at bringing together a range of contemporary expertise that can shed light on the relationship between media pluralism in Latin America and processes of democratization and social justice. In doing so, the authors of the book provide empirically grounded theoretical insight into the extent to which questions about media pluralism-broadly understood as the striving for diverse and inclusive media spheres-are an essential part of scholarly debates on democratic governance. The rise in recent years of authoritarianism, populism and nationalism, both in fragile and stable democratic systems, makes media pluralism an intellectual and empirical cornerstone of any debate about the future of democratic governance around the world. This book-useful for students and researchers on topics such as Media, Communications, Latin American Studies and Politics-aims to make a contribution to such debate by approaching some pressing questions about the relationship of Latin American governments with media structures, journalistic practices, the communication capabilities of vulnerable populations and the expressive opportunities of the general public.

Why does Islam seem to dominate Egyptian politics, especially when the country's endemic poverty and deep economic inequality would seem to render it promising terrain for a politics of radical redistribution rather than one of religious conservativism? This book argues that the answer lies not in the political unsophistication of voters, the subordination of economic interests to spiritual ones, or the ineptitude of secular and leftist politicians, but in organizational and social factors that shape the opportunities of parties in authoritarian and democratizing systems to reach potential voters. Tracing the performance of Islamists and their rivals in Egyptian elections over the course of almost forty years, this book not only explains why Islamists win elections, but illuminates the possibilities for the emergence in Egypt of the kind of political pluralism that is at the heart of what we expect from democracy.

Mass attachment to religion is rapidly declining in most of the world; Why, and What comes next? The world is becoming less religious. Since 2007, there has been a pervasive decline in religious belief and most of the world's people now say that God is less important in their lives than they said He was in the quarter century before 2007. The American public showed the most dramatic shift of all. The United States, which for many years stood as a highly religious outlier among the world's high-income countries, now ranks as the 12th least religious country for which data are available. Many factors contributed to this dramatic worldwide shift, but as Inglehart shows, certain ones stand out. For centuries, virtually all major religions encouraged women to stay home and produce as many children as possible; and they sternly discouraged divorce, abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and any other form of sexual behavior not linked with reproduction. These norms were necessary for societies to survive when facing high infant mortality and low life expectancy: societies that didn't instill them tended to die out. Recent technological advances have greatly increased life expectancy and cut infant mortality to a tiny fraction of its historic levels, making these norms no longer necessary for societal survival. These norms require repressing strong natural urges, but, since they present traditional norms as absolute values, most religions strongly resist change. The resulting tension, together with the fact that rising existential security has made people less dependent on religion, opened the way for an exodus from religion. Utilizing a massive global data base, Inglehart analyzes the conditions under which religiosity collapses, and explores its implications for the future.

This book provides a systematic analysis of the major structural and institutional governance mechanisms in Cameroon, critically analysing the constitutional and legislative texts on Cameroon's semi-presidential system, the electoral system, the legislature, the judiciary, the Constitutional Council and the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms. The author offers an assessment of the practical application of the laws regulating constitutional institutions and how they impact on governance. To lay the groundwork for the analysis, the book examines the historical, constitutional and political context of governance in Cameroon, from independence and reunification in 1960-1961, through the adoption of the 1996 Constitution, to more recent events including the current Anglophone crisis. Offering novel insights on new institutions such as the Senate and the Constitutional Council and their contribution to the democratic advancement of Cameroon, the book also provides the first critical assessment of the legislative provisions carving out a special autonomy status for the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon and considers how far these provisions go to resolve the Anglophone Problem. This book will be of interest to scholars of public law, legal history and African politics. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351028868, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Canada trying to bring together Indigenous peoples, "two solitudes" of the French and the British, as well as a variety of poly-ethnic immigrants has mastered search for consensus and compromise as the best response to national, regional, political and ethnic tensions. This book examines how the evolution of various ideas, schemes, projects, proposals and objectives influenced the Canadian political and social present. It analyses how far Canada was able to realize its initial visions and to what extent it was forced to rework and reform them. It takes into account both the ideas which have actually been implemented and the ones which never progressed beyond the conceptual sphere, yet are important from historical perspective.

On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today is the first comparative analysis of two central political events that have altered our world forever: the Arab uprisings which started in Tunisia, and the Iranian revolution in 1979. Adib-Moghaddam demonstrates how contemporary forms of protest are changing our understanding about the way power and resistance function. In a theoretical tour de force which is substantiated with a range of primary material, he argues that acts of protest in Tehran to Cairo can be entirely linked to the same act in New York, London, Madrid and Athens. Breaking through the east/west, north/south divide, Adib-Moghaddam shows how the Arab revolts promise to shift the discourse away from the idea that Arabs and Muslims are peculiar, that "Middle Eastern Studies" cannot be linked to political theory, that the dynamics of rebellion "there" are fundamentally different from the politics of revolt "here". Adib-Moghaddam argues that the dialectics of power and resistance are truly universal and that they are unfolding within a globalised political context that is increasingly interconnected. In order to illuminate this argument theoretically, the study is organised around conceptual terms that feed into forms of power and resistance, such as revolution, radicalism, dissent, knowledge, neighbour and reform. These terms and concepts are discussed and deconstructed via an empirical discussion of pivotal events beyond the non-western world, demonstrating that for a long time, and without realising it, we have been living in the end times of unitary categories such as "west" and "east."

This edited book aims at bringing together a range of contemporary expertise that can shed light on the relationship between media pluralism in Latin America and processes of democratization and social justice. In doing so, the authors of the book provide empirically grounded theoretical insight into the extent to which questions about media pluralism-broadly understood as the striving for diverse and inclusive media spheres-are an essential part of scholarly debates on democratic governance. The rise in recent years of authoritarianism, populism and nationalism, both in fragile and stable democratic systems, makes media pluralism an intellectual and empirical cornerstone of any debate about the future of democratic governance around the world. This book-useful for students and researchers on topics such as Media, Communications, Latin American Studies and Politics-aims to make a contribution to such debate by approaching some pressing questions about the relationship of Latin American governments with media structures, journalistic practices, the communication capabilities of vulnerable populations and the expressive opportunities of the general public.

What do citizens do in response to threats to democracy? This book examines the mass politics of civic obligation in the US, UK, and Germany. Exploring threats like foreign interference in elections and polarization, Sara Wallace Goodman shows that citizens respond to threats to democracy as partisans, interpreting civic obligation through a partisan lens that is shaped by their country's political institutions. This divided, partisan citizenship makes democratic problems worse by eroding the national unity required for democratic stability. Employing novel survey experiments in a cross-national research design, Citizenship in Hard Times presents the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of citizenship norms in the face of democratic threat. In showing partisan citizens are not a reliable bulwark against democratic backsliding, Goodman identifies a key vulnerability in the mass politics of democratic order. In times of democratic crisis, defenders of democracy must work to fortify the shared foundations of democratic citizenship.

Between 2021 and 2031, the UK government is set to spend over GBP230 billion on its military. Who decides how to use these funds, and how can we be sure that the UK's armed forces can meet the threats of tomorrow? This book provides the answers to these crucial questions. Concentrating on decisions taken below the political level, it uncovers the factors that underpin the translation of strategic direction into military capability. In a series of interviews, over 30 top admirals, generals and air marshals give their own views on the procurement and maintenance of the nation's current and future military capability. Their unrivalled professional knowledge and experience affords a fascinating insight into the higher management of national defence.

Whilst the Chinese Communist Party is one of the most powerful political institutions in the world, it is also one of the least understood, due to the party's secrecy and tight control over the archives, the press and the Internet. Having governed the People's Republic of China for nearly 70 years though, much interest remains into how this quintessentially Leninist party governs one-fifth of the world and runs the world's second-largest economy. The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party gives a comprehensive and multi-faceted picture of the party's traditions and values - as well as its efforts to stay relevant in the twenty-first century. It uses a wealth of contemporary data and qualitative analysis to explore the intriguing relationship between the party on the one hand, and the government, the legal and judicial establishment and the armed forces, on the other. Tracing the influence of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, as well as Mao Zedong, on contemporary leaders ranging from Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, the sections cover: the party's history and traditions; how the party works and seeks to remain relevant; major policy arenas; the CCP in the twenty-first century. The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Politics, Asian Politics, Political Parties and International Relations. Go to https://www.bookshop4u.com/lw1 to see Willy Lam introduce the book.

The global economic crisis has exposed the limits of neoliberalism and dramatically deepened social polarization. Yet, despite increasing social resistance and opposition, neoliberalism prevails globally. Radical alternatives, moreover, are only rarely debated. And if they are, such alternatives are reduced to new Keynesian and new developmental agendas, which fail to address existing class divisions and imperialist relations of domination. This collection of essays polarizes the debate between radical and reformist alternatives by exploring head-on the antagonistic structure of capitalist development. The contributors ground their proposals in an international, non-Eurocentric and Marxian inspired analysis of capitalism and its crises. From Latin America to Asia, Africa to the Middle East and Europe to the US, social and labour movements have emerged as the protagonists behind creating alternatives. This book's new generation of scholars has written accessible yet theoretically informed and empirically rich chapters elaborating radical worldwide strategies for moving beyond neoliberalism, and beyond capitalism. The intent is to provoke critical reflection and positive action towards substantive change.

Rwanda and Burundi are strikingly similar countries that underwent democratization in the early 1990s. In both, resistance to democratic reforms led to coups d'etat and presidential assassinations. A conundrum arises in terms of what transpires next. In Rwanda, total genocide was perpetrated by extremist Hutu actors, including government officials, upon the country's Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu populations. In Burundi the coup d'etat failed and instead ushered in a lengthy period of civil war. This divergence in outcome is puzzling given the similarity of these two countries, and it is not adequately explained by studies that address collective violence in each. This book utilizes an integrative approach that facilitates the formation of an explanation that more fully accounts for variation in the type of collective violence that occurred in Rwanda and Burundi. Showing that political actors - during periods of major institutional change - do not all respond to or perceive reform in the exact same manner or in a necessarily rational manner, this book makes an important contribution to the literature on ethnic conflict, collective violence and democratization in Africa.

Since 2001 The Democratic Republic of Congo has been engaged in a three-fold transition process towards liberalisation, democratisation, and peace. Throughout this process, external actors (donors, international financial institutions, the UN system, aid agencies) have played a leading role, effectively setting the orientations and modalities of this transition, including their institutional dimension. Congolese actors have not been passively subjected to this process, however, but have potently shaped it in various ways. This book investigates the relationship between international aid partners and various Congolese actors since 2001. It examines this relationship as an aspect of the state reform process, with particular reference to the administration. Stylianos Moshonas argues that the pace and nature of reform has been compromised by the contradictions inherent within the process itself, as advocated by international partners, and by the ability of Congolese power holders to accommodate and co-opt such reforms in line with their own political strategies. Rather than framing aid relations as the outcome of the oppositional points of view of donors and Congolese actors, this book presents a systematic focus on the compromises and accommodative characteristics that aid politics have coalesced around, as well as the contradictory positions donors have found themselves in.

In recent years, the Zimbabwe crisis rendered the country and its citizens to be a typical case of 'failed states', the world over. Zimbabwean society was and is still confronted with different challenges which include political, economic and social problems. Attempts to overcome these challenges have thrown light on the power that rests within individuals and or groups to change and even revolutionize their localities, communities, states and ultimately the world at large. Through experience, individuals and groups have promoted ideas that have aided in changing mentalities, attitudes and behaviors in societies at different levels. This book brings together contributors from various academic disciplines to reflect on and theorize the contours of power, including the intrinsic and or extrinsic models of power, which pertain to individuals, communities, and or groups in order to transform society. Reflections are on various groups such as political movements, environmental movements, religious groups, advocacy groups, gender groups, to mention but a few, as they struggle against marginalization, discrimination, exploitation, and other forms of oppression showing their agency or compliance.