This fully updated fifth edition of An Introduction to African Politics is an ideal textbook for those new to the study of this fascinating continent. Charting trends in government over six decades of the post-colonial era, the book tackles key questions such as: How have African states made sense of their colonial inheritance? How relevant are ethnic and religious identities? Why have some states collapsed and others prospered? Why did the one-party state fail? Why is contemporary Africa now dominated by electoral authoritarian states, and not the multi-party democracies promised in the 1990s? Key features include: thematically organised, with chapters exploring issues such as colonialism, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, social class, ideology, legitimacy, authority, sovereignty and democracy; new five-part structure makes clearer Africa's political evolution over time; new chapter on the emergence of 'hybrid states' and 'electoral authoritarianism'; more coverage of twenty-first century governance trends such as China's impact, the changing role of the military, different uses of 'client-patron' networks, Western conditionality and the 'Africa rising' debate; colour presentation of maps, photos and data; boxed case studies including Mali, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Somalia, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tunisia and Angola; each chapter concludes with key terms and definitions, questions and further reading. An Introduction to African Politics is essential reading for students seeking an accessible introduction to the complex social relationships and events that characterise the politics of post-colonial Africa.

This book offers a comparative study of military reserves in contemporary democracies. A combination of budgetary pressures, new missions and emerging military roles during the past three decades has led the armed forces of democracies to rethink the training and use of reserve forces. Moreover, reservists have become central to the armed forces as part of moves towards "total" or "comprehensive" defense. Despite this, a scholarly bias towards studying regulars and conscripts means that reservists and reserve soldiers continue to receive only marginal attention. This volume fills that lacuna through a series of country studies examining how best to understand the peculiarities of reservist service. In contrast to regulars and conscripts, reservists are marked by their dual management of civilian and military careers, different family dynamics, diverse motivations and commitment to the armed forces, the material and non-material incentives they are offered, and their place in the political sphere. This volume suggests two frames to make sense of such differences: first, it looks at reservists as "transmigrants" traveling between the military and civilian worlds; and, second, it analyzes the multiple informal "contracts" and negotiations that bind them to the military. All the chapters adopt these conceptualizations, granting the volume a common focus and integrative frame. The volume will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, civil-military relations, sociology and International Relations.

This book explores domestic opposition to formal US military bases in Latin America, and provides evidence of a growing network of informal and secretive base-like arrangements that supports US military operations in the Latin American Region.

The death of feminism is regularly proclaimed in the West. Yet at the same time feminism has never had such an extensive presence, whether in international norms and institutions, or online in blogs and social networking campaigns. This book argues that the women's movement is not over; but rather social movement theory has led us to look in the wrong places. This book offers both methodological and theoretical innovations in the study of social movements, and analyses how the trajectories of protest activity and institution-building fit together. The rich empirical study, together with focused research on discursive activism, blogging, popular culture and advocacy networks, provides an extraordinary resource, showing how the women's movements can survive the highs and lows and adapt in unexpected ways. Expert contributors explore the ways in which the movement is continuing to work its way through institutions, and persists within submerged networks, cultural production and in everyday living, sustaining itself in non-receptive political environments and maintaining a discursive feminist space for generations to come. Set in a transnational perspective, this book trace the legacies of the Australian women's movement to the present day in protest, non-government organisations, government organisations, popular culture, the Internet and the Slut Walk. The Women's Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet will be of interest to international students and scholars of gender politics, gender studies, social movement studies and comparative politics.

Contemporary bureaucracy is a set of norms, rules, procedures, and formalities which includes administration, business, and NGOs. Where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Beatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying this process. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control, producing social and political indifference.

This book contributes to both the internal debate in liberalism and the application of political liberalism to the process of democratization in East Asia. Beyond John Rawls' original intention to limit the scope of political liberalism to only existing and well-ordered liberal democracies, political liberalism has the potential to inspire and contribute to democratic establishment and maintenance in East Asia. Specifically, the book has two main objectives. First, it will demonstrate that political liberalism offers the most promising vision for liberal democracy, and it can be defended against contemporary perfectionist objections. Second, it will show that perfectionist approaches to political Confucianism suffer from practical and theoretical difficulties. Instead, an alternative model of democracy inspired by political liberalism will be explored in order to achieve a multivariate structure for citizens to come to terms with democracy in their own ways, to support a neutral state that ensures the establishment and stability of democracy, and to maintain an active public role for Confucianism to prevent it from being banished to the private sphere. This model represents a more promising future for democracy in East Asia.

This book contributes to emerging debates about Levelling Up the UK Economy, considering these alongside the nature of, and trends in, both the political economy and spatial disparities. Drawing on a complex systems framing, the book pulls together a range of evidence to provide insights about the agenda from macro, meso and micro levels of analyses, including utilising qualitative data from a small scoping study with Directors of Regeneration across several 'left behind' places and 25 residents of 'left behind' Redcar & Cleveland in Teesside. The book outlines phases in capitalism's development, particularly the shift from post-war capitalism to a post-industrial and neoliberal society and the implications for spatial inequalities. The 2022 Levelling Up White Paper is analysed alongside a focus on the role of local government relative to the agenda. The book offers an empirical case study of 'left behind' Redcar & Cleveland, exposing deindustrialisation, insecure employment, crime, anti-social behaviour and sentiments on a North South divide and Levelling Up. We suggest that only a transformative change in the political economy, including significant and sustained investment at different spatial levels, is likely to achieve the ambition to Level Up.

A unique examination of the role architecture plays in the media-politico spectacle which plays out in today's mass media. Written by 14 influential academics, it draws on case studies from across timeframes and across nations including the US, UK, China, Eastern Europe, South Korea, Belgium and Austria. Illustrated with over 30 black and white illustrations

A unique examination of the role architecture plays in the media-politico spectacle which plays out in today's mass media. Written by 14 influential academics, it draws on case studies from across timeframes and across nations including the US, UK, China, Eastern Europe, South Korea, Belgium and Austria. Illustrated with over 30 black and white illustrations

Daniel Pipes has collected some of his sharpest and most prescient writings from the quarter century 1989-2014. In them, he addresses a range of current topics, from the origins of the civil war in Syria to denying the Islamic factor in terrorism, to the way to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Pipes pursues two themes in particular: the internal instability of Muslim-majority countries, in which nothing abides, and the expression of Muslims' drive to apply Islamic law. Pipes' interests concentrate on the Middle East as understood from a historical point of view and on the role of Islam in politics. Divided into five thematic sections, this work addresses the Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle Eastern politics, Islam in modern life, Islam in the West, and individuals connected to American Islam. Pipes' deep knowledge, gained over forty-five years of study, combined with incisive writing and a well-regarded courage to speak out on controversial topics make Nothing Abides a compelling read for Middle East specialists, students, and the interested public.

What does revolution mean in the Middle East? Can the Middle East experience be compared with revolution in China, Latin America and East Europe? These questions are the focus of this book, first published in 1972, which examines the revolutionary significance of the major economic, social and political changes in the Middle East over the last fifty years. The special feature is the consideration of the changing connotation of the word 'revolution' and a recognition of a certain continuity in the political style of Middle Eastern societies which limits the use of the term in analysing the political change.

The growing salience of migration in today's political and economic climate has drawn attention to the relevance of regional responses to global human mobility. This unique book explores the dynamics of migration governance beyond the traditional perspective of the state and examines why, how and with what effects states cooperate at a regional level on aspects of international migration and mobility. Developing an innovative approach centered on the organisation of migration governance, The Dynamics of Regional Migration Governance provides a comparative analysis of developments in regional and sub-regional migration governance on a truly global scale. From Africa, Asia-Pacific and Central Asia, to Europe, the Middle East and North and South America, leading scholars offer a fresh understanding of the trajectories and particularities of regional migration governance. These engaging chapters show how human mobility and its governance can create tensions between states that hinder or prevent cooperation. Providing a much-needed shift from a focus on governance outputs to governance processes, this compelling book highlights how regional practices, processes and structures of migration governance can play an active role in producing understandings of international migration as a social and political issue. Deploying geographical scope, conceptual insight and empirical depth, this comprehensive book is ideal for advanced students, as well as scholars investigating regionalism, migration and mobility. An acutely relevant work, it will also appeal to professional practitioners and policymakers working in international migration 'This is a unique and forward-looking book that looks at regional migration governance from a dynamic and multi-level perspective beyond formal regional institutions, focusing also on non-state actors. This collection is also unique in that it covers a number of world regions including Asia and Latin America and not just the usual suspects of EU and North America. I strongly recommend this work to students and scholars and, why not, practitioners working in the area of governance, migration, and international relations.' - Anna Trandafyllidou, European University Institute, Italy

This book analyses the discourses of economic liberalization reform in six Western European countries - Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. It provides systematic empirical evidence that policy-related discourses are much more than noise; rather, they are detailed expressions of institutional complementarities and political struggles. The author posits that the more open a discourse, the broader the range of perceived interests, which, in turn, increases the intensity of conflicts. Similarly, the more public discourse centres on coordination, the more intense actors need to engage with opposite interests, which most probably intensifies political disputes as well. Moreover, Wueest argues that the formation of a consensus within the political mainstream has left a vacuum for outsider parties such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain to feed on the contentiousness of economic liberalization policies.

For many years now we have witnessed the developing use of the internet and associated technologies by political actors and organisations. Claims and counter claims have been made as its suitability as a tool to help in the struggle to re-invigorate political participation in democracies across the globe has been contested. This book charts the shifting sands of political activity in the digital age. It interrogates the hybrid nature of modern politics as online and offline actions blur the boundaries of traditional politics between 'real-life' co-presence and the booming virtual domain of politics. By so doing, it critically reflects on the latest scholarship on the subject while concurrently advancing stimulating new insights into it. Encapsulating both the range and the diverse velocities of change in different political arenas and geographical locations, this volumes seeks to map out a path if not towards the politics of tomorrow then towards a better comprehension of the politics of today. Featuring a range of international and comparative case studies presenting research on the UK, US, Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Africa and China, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics and Media, Political Communication, New Media studies, Public Administration, Sociology, Communication Studies, Computing and Information and Communications Technologies.

Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs from 1947 to 1964, set the framework of foreign policy which has remained India's reference point until the present. One of the most significant leaders of the twentieth century, Nehru came to power in the early years of the Cold War, determined to assert independent India's influence and interests in Asia and beyond. Drawing on the Nehru Papers, Francine Frankel's When Nehru Looked East reinterprets the doctrine of non-alignment with which Nehru is most closely identified to reveal its strategic purpose. Analyzing India-US and India-China relations during this period, Frankel explains how these parties came to distrust each other. From the outset, Nehru's vision of India's destiny as a great power collided with that of the US as leader and protector of the free world. He considered the US a rival in South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East and carried out an active diplomacy to dissuade newly independent nations from joining US-led anti-communist mutual security alliances and instead follow India's example of non-alignment. He did not see a threat from the Soviet Union and believed, despite the dispute with China over the northern border, that India's approach would bring India and China together as advocates of Asianism to counter American penetration in the region. This historic miscalculation, manifested in the 1962 China-India War, overthrew the pillars of Nehru's foreign policy. Frankel provides the most authoritative account yet of the origins of India-US suspicions and India-China rivalries. Outlasting the Cold War, Nehru's worldview lived on in the mindset of successor generations, making it difficult for the US and India to form a strategic partnership and establish a natural balance in Asia.

This book explores the causes of corruption in the Middle East and North Africa through a systematic cross-national comparative analysis of fifteen countries in the region. It aims to explain causal relationships between corruption and differences in political and socio-economic dimensions within these different countries over the period 1999-2010. The countries are grouped together into three sub-regions (the Gulf region, North Africa, and Mashreq plus Yemen). The author finds that the main variables that showed robustness in impacting the intensity of corruption are the rule of law, quality of regulations, and trade openness. Poverty rates and income inequality have been clear triggers for petty corruption. Meanwhile, natural resources endowments have shown less of an impact on the levels of corruption, and similarly women's empowerment has not been found to be a strong indicator.

This collection emphasizes a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem of scale, with essays ranging in subject matter from literature to film, architecture, the plastic arts, philosophy, and scientific and political writing. Its contributors consider a variety of issues provoked by the sudden and pressing shifts in scale brought on by globalization and the era of the Anthropocene, including: the difficulties of defining the concept of scale; the challenges that shifts in scale pose to knowledge formation; the role of scale in mediating individual subjectivity and agency; the barriers to understanding objects existing in scalar realms different from our own; the role of scale in mediating the relationship between humans and the environment; and the nature of power, authority, and democracy at different social scales.

Often neglected in the study of far right organisations, post-communist Europe recently witnessed the rise and fall of a number of populist radical right parties. The Populist Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe is the first comparative study to focus on the ideology, impact, and electoral performance of this party family in the region. The book advances a series of arguments concerning the context and text of these parties, and systematically analyses the supply-side and demand-side of populist radical right politics. Whilst populist radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe maintain broad similarities with their West European counterparts, they come across as a distinct phenomenon worthy of study in their own right. Parties like Ataka (Bulgaria), Jobbik (Hungary), and the SNS (Slovakia) resort to historical legacies and contextual idiosyncrasies to frame their ideology; interact with other parties over a number of policy areas; and ultimately compete for public office on the basis of their nativist agenda. The book provides a novel framework for the analysis of different aspects of populist radical right politics, notably enhancing the understanding of this phenomenon by means of primary data such as personal interviews with party leaders and original expert surveys. Using the ideological features of these parties as an overarching analytical tool, this book is essential reading for students and scholars researching the far right, post-communist issues and European politics in general.

This book examines in depth the impact of the EU on aspects of the quality of democracy in eight selected post-communist countries. Considering both the political and legal aspects of the dynamics among institutions and focussing on inter-institutional accountability, the book analyses how constitutional designs have been effectively implemented to achieve this, and to what extent this was the result of EU action. In order to make a comparative assessment of the EU on democracies, the book features detailed case studies according to their different status vis-a-vis the EU, including older new member states: Poland and Hungary; newer new member states: Romania and Bulgaria; potential candidates: Albania and Serbia; and neighbour and remote neighbour states: Ukraine and Armenia. Each chapter addresses a range of dimensions and most relevant domains of inter-institutional accountability, that is: executive-legislative relationships; constitutional justice; decentralisation and regionalism; and the role of ombudsman or other relevant authorities. Seeking to assess how important the role of the EU has been in influencing the modes and characteristic of democracies and fundamental rights established in these regions, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, EU politics, Post-communist studies and democratization studies.

This book presents a ground-breaking comparative study of the bilateral relations of all 27 EU member states with Russia and an assessment of their impact on the EU's efforts to conduct a coherent and effective policy towards its most important neighbour. While there has been a lot of research on European foreign policy, there has been much less on the role that national foreign policies play in it. Based on a common analytical framework, this book offers a detailed analysis of 'national perspectives on Russia' and how they interact with and affect policymaking at the EU-level. The authors provide deep insights into the relationship between individual states and Russia looking at a range of policy areas: economics, trade, energy, security, culture and education. They are not only interested in examining policy failure but also probing the possibilities of seeing national foreign policies and the bilateralism with third parties that they often entail as a potentially positive resource for the European Union. As Russia is an example of a particularly hard case for EU foreign policy, this book yields important insights concerning the possibilities as well as limits of developing a common EU policy in the future. It will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, EU Studies, Russian politics, foreign policy studies and international politics.

This book considers whether the potential of democracy following the end of the Cold War was diminished by technocratic, judicial control of politics in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the complexities and drawbacks of modern constitutionalism by offering a comprehensive theoretical and comparative-empirical assessment of the status and role of constitutionalism in five new EU Member States. The democratization of countries in Central and Eastern Europe has been guarded by constitutions and constitutional courts. This book examines the implications of powerful courts and rigid constitutions for the democratic engagement of citizens and the political authority of politicians. Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the book analyses the historical emergence of powerful constitutional institutions in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The author argues that the democratic promise of 1989 largely lost out to a technocratic and top-down view of judicial control of politics - a state of affairs reinforced by EU accession. The current backlash in countries such as Hungary and Romania indicates that the realization of democratization to the extent initially expected might be ever more remote in some new democracies. New Democracies in Crisis? will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, democratization studies, European constitutionalism, socio-legal studies, governance and comparative politics.

This truly comparative volume examines the "life cycle" of party governments in Europe from 1990 onwards, and analyses its role and function in contemporary European parliamentary democracies. The life and the performance of party governments in Europe became more and more volatile and publicly contested. In some cases, it has even challenge the democratic quality of the state. This book presents comparative analyses of party governments from formation and duration, to performance. It brings together some of the foremost scholars researching on party government to evaluate existing theories and compare both the developments in the Western and the 'new' Eastern Europe in an empirically-grounded comparative analysis. The book discusses the interaction between various institutions, political parties and policies, and evaluates how institutional change and party behaviour can drive the "life cycle" of party government. Party Government in the New Europe will be of interest to students and scholars of Comparative Politics, Democracy, Government and European Politics.

Migrant organizations are of vital importance for countries of residence and countries of origin, but the empirical and theoretical knowledge of the cross-border character of migrant organizations remains incomplete. It is clear that migrant transnationalism challenges the governance of nation-states on the local and national levels. This book, the outcome of an ECPR joint session, systematically and empirically analyzes the differing roles that transnational migrant organizations play in their countries of residence and origin. Drawing on research conducted in Belgium, England, Germany, Holland, Poland and Portugal, it focuses on the relations between migrant organizations and the state. Offering an opportunity for comparative analysis, it also examines why migrants and their organizations engage in different forms of border crossing activities, and how various political systems influence, and are influenced by these forms of engagement. Migration and Organized Civil Society will be of strong interest to students and researchers of political science, political sociology, migration studies, transnationalism, and Diaspora studies.

This book examines young people's political engagement in the Anglo-American democracies. It is often alleged that young people are disengaged from politics on a number of levels. The commonly held view is that young people don't vote, they do not trust politicians and have low levels of political interest. But is this true, where is it true and to what extent? Examining voter turnout, political trust, political interest, electoral and non-electoral forms of participation and Internet use, this book provides a comprehensive account of young people's political engagement in the US, Britain, Canada and Australia. In doing so this book challenges the conventional wisdom on a number of fronts by showing young people's political engagement to be much more complicated than many of the stereotypes suggest (in both good and bad ways).In this way, this book provides a report card on young people's political engagement in the twenty-first century. Young People and Politics will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, public policy and sociology, particularly those with a focus on young people and politics, political participation and public opinion.