This discerning book examines China's newly developed soft-intervention policy towards North Korea, Myanmar and the two Sudans by examining China's diplomatic statements and behaviours. It also highlights the Chinese soft-intervention policy in economic manipulation and diplomatic persuasion in the recent generations of Chinese leadership under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping. Providing a new perspective on the study of China through its discrepant foreign policies, Hak Yin Li delivers a comprehensive overview of the principles of Chinese foreign policy, critically examining the evolution of the Chinese non-intervention policy. Rich with empirical discussions on key cases, the book also includes interviews with Chinese scholars and provides a wide breadth of information from official sources such as China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This invigorating read will be an excellent resource for international relations scholars, policy analysts and researchers who are interested in the evolution of Chinese non-intervention policy, and China's emerging soft-interventions in North Korea, Myanmar and the two Sudans. Readers with an interest in Chinese foreign policy and China's normative role in shaping the world order will also find this an enlightening read.

Offering a comprehensive introduction to the comparison of governments and political systems, this new edition helps students to understand not just the institutions and political cultures of their own countries but also those of a wide range of democracies and authoritarian regimes from around the world. This new edition offers: -A revised structure to aid navigation and understanding -New learning features, 'Using Theory' and 'Exploring Problems', designed to help students think comparatively -Empirical global examples, with increased coverage of non-Western scholarship and analyses -Coverage of important contemporary topics including: minorities; LGBTQ+ issues; identity politics; women in politics; political trust; populism; Covid-19. Featuring a wide range of engaging learning features, this book is an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Comparative Politics, Comparative Government, Introduction to Politics and Introduction to Political Science.

Based on the synthesis of a large empirical and theoretical literature on center-region relations in China and Russia, Federalism in China and Russia is one of the first attempts to integrate this literature from different disciplines into a coherent common framework. Libman and Rochlitz argue that the divergence in growth performance between Russia and China can be - at least partially - explained by a number of features of the Chinese system of center-regional relations. The authors offer a comparative analysis of the development of center-region relations in Russia and in China and explore several dimensions of these relations: fiscal ties and incentives; bureaucratic practices; flows of information; and local government practices, while addressing the determinants of divergence between both countries. They also examine how the Chinese system has recently started to change, by adopting several features of the Russian model, which might be one of the reasons for China's declining growth performance in recent years. Federalism in China and Russia should be read by scholars in public economics, political economy and comparative politics, as well as by students and policy analysts. For scholars, the book serves as a point of reference in studying the comparative evolution of the two countries. It will enrich the discussion on fiscal federalism, center-region relations and sub-national political regimes, and could potentially become an important part of syllabi in political economy, public economics and comparative politics courses. For policy analysts, the book offers a comprehensive survey of the evolution of center-periphery relations of the two countries and the differences between them, which is important to better understand the overall development of Russia and China.

The book analyses the diplomatic recognition of individual countries using the case of divided nations, offering new insights into our understanding of the evolution of the international system. Combining large-N quantitative analysis and in-depth comparative study, it is rich in empirical and theoretical material.

What caused the Covid-19 pandemic? Were the mitigation measures imposed by many governments - such as lockdowns and mask-wearing mandates - based on scientific evidence, or rather aimed at curtailing civil liberties and disrupting economic activities, under the secret maneuvering of a global cabal of politicians and financiers? And were Covid-19 vaccines effective in curbing the spread of the disease, or were they just a profitable scheme by big pharmaceutical companies? These questions and speculations, some legitimate, some dubious, have been swirling around the globe through social media, alternative information outlets, instant messaging apps, and mainstream media since the beginning of the pandemic, feeding the 'infodemic' - an overwhelming surge of information, misinformation, rumours and conspiracy theories which continue to linger in public and private discourse. With an original take on concepts and theories drawn from post-truth and disinformation studies, the book analyses the 'infodemic' through a series of global case studies. Framing the infodemic as a complex, multi-layered phenomenon with vast geopolitical implications, Gabriele Cosentino reveals the global competition for control in twenty-first century geopolitics between Western liberal democracies and non-Western autocracies, and above all between the United States and China.

The political and symbolic centrality of capital cities has been challenged by increasing economic globalization. This is especially true of secondary capital cities; capital cities which, while being the seat of national political power, are not the primary economic city of their nation state. David Kaufmann examines the unique challenges that these cities face entering globalised, inter-urban competition while not possessing a competitive political economy. Varieties of Capital Cities offers empirically rich case studies of four secondary capital cities: Bern, Ottawa, The Hague, and Washington, D.C. Analysed with an innovative research framework, this book shows through its clearly structured analysis, that while the pressures facing these cities are the same, the mechanisms they employ to cope with them are very different. They have formulated a wide variety of policies to supplement their capital function with economically promising profiles, even though they cannot escape their destinies as government cities. This book is an impressive contribution to an area of study largely neglected by urban studies, political science, and economic geography. With vital lessons for urban policy makers, the interested practitioner will find a pool of inspiration for their urban strategies. Students and scholars of these subjects will find this book interesting, and will also find it invaluable as a lesson for how to develop and execute comparative case studies.

Policy making is more globally connected today than ever before. Policy ideas, experiences and expertise circulate rapidly over great distances. But who is involved in distributing policy, how do they do it, and through which arenas? This book examines the work involved in policy circulation, and as the first genuinely transdisciplinary collection on policy circulation, it offers an insight into the globally dispersed yet interconnected nature of contemporary policy making and the transdisciplinary future of policy circulation studies. Bringing together international scholars and multidisciplinary perspectives, this book showcases theoretical approaches from across the social sciences, and offers empirical perspectives from around the world. Synthesizing related literatures on policy transfer, diffusion and mobility, and assessing their differences and commonalities, this book proposes ways to foster transdisciplinary dialogue. Including a range of case studies, from both the Global North and South, Public Policy Circulation provides a succinct understanding and critique of the Global policy transfer, diffusion and mobility through the lens of arenas, agents and actions. This book will be a vital tool for academics and students of political science, public policy, public administration, international relations, geography, urban studies, sociology and anthropology alike, with its up-to-date coverage of contemporary policy circulation, and developments in the theory of global policy movement and adoption. It will also be of interest to practitioners in government agencies and NGOs, providing insight into their increasing role in both the national and international transfer and dispersal of policies. Contributors include: T. Baker, M.I. Dussauge-Laguna, R. Jolkkonen, O. Loeblova, P. McGuirk, S. Montero, M. Morais de Sa e Silva, A. Rusu, T. Soremi, J. Spence, C. Walker, A. Wood

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince remains an influential book more than five centuries after he wrote his timeless classic. However, the political philosophy expressed by Machiavelli in his tome is often misunderstood. Although he thought humans to be rational, self-interested creatures, and even though he proposed an approach to politics in which the ends justify the means, Machiavelli was not, as some have argued, simply "a teacher of evil." The Prince's many ancient and medieval examples, while relevant to sixteenth century readers, are lost on most of today's students of Machiavelli. Examples from modern films and television programs, which are more familiar and understandable to contemporary readers, provide a better way to accurately teach Machiavelli's lessons. Indeed, modern media, such as Breaking Bad, The Godfather, The Walking Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, House of Cards, Argo, and The Departed, are replete with illustrations that teach Machiavelli's critical principles, including the need to caress or annihilate, learning "how not to be good," why it is better to be feared than loved, and how to act as both the lion and the fox. Modern media are used in this book to exemplify the tactics Machiavelli advocated and to comprehensively demonstrate that Machiavelli intended for government actors and those exercising power in other contexts to fight for a greater good and strive to achieve glory.

At a time when states are increasingly hostile to the international rights regime, human rights activists have turned to non-state and sub-state actors to begin the implementation of human rights law. This complicates the conventional analysis of relationships between local actors, global norms, and cosmopolitanism. The contributions in this open access collection examine the "lived realities of human rights" and critically engage with debates on gender, sexuality, localism and cosmopolitanism, weaving insights from multiple disciplines into a broader call for interdisciplinary scholarship informed by practice. Overall, the contributors argue that the power of human rights depends on their ability to be continuously broadened and re-imagined in locales around the world. It is only on this basis that human rights can remain relevant and be effectively used to push local, national and international institutions to put in place structural reforms that advance equity and pluralism in these perilous times. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Joseph Benedict (Ben) Chifley, former train driver and Prime Minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949, lived through two economic depressions and two world wars. This, combined with his rural background and commitment to the labour movement, played a major role in the development of his internationalist perspective. Often overlooked by historians, Chifley believed that the only way to avoid war and economic depression was through the establishment of international rules-based economic and collective security institutions. These were beliefs he had held since the early 1930s. Chifley was a prime minister with a keen interest in post-war Asia, who understood that the old colonial order was ending. He was a great admirer of the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. This book reveals the extraordinary convergence of worldviews of two fellow internationalists, Chifley and Nehru. This convergence can be seen in their views on the need to adjust to a changing post-colonial world; their internationalism; their support for the United Nations; their opposition to Western colonialism; their anti-war attitudes and their animosity towards the American and British Cold War framework through which the post-war world was viewed. Historian Frank Bongiorno wrote about Julie's work on Chifley: 'it is a tremendous achievement to produce such a new vision of a major political figure . it is an important contribution to Australian political, foreign policy and intellectual history'.

Using autoethnography to examine the social construction of whiteness in Puerto Rico. Guillermo Rebollo Gil draws from artistic, activist and popular culture registers to examine the multifarious yet often subtle ways race privilege shapes and informs daily life in the Puerto Rican archipelago. Cross-disciplinary in approach, Whiteness in Puerto Rico speaks to the present political moment in a country marked by austerity, disaster capitalism and protest.

State making has long been regarded as a European development, both historically and geographically. In this innovative book, the authors add fresh insights into the nature and causes of state making by de-centering this Eurocentric viewpoint through simultaneous changes of conceptual, theoretical and empirical focus. De-Centering State Making combines knowledge from comparative politics and international relations, creating a more holistic perspective that moves away from the widespread idea that state making and war are intrinsically linked. The book uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine historical and contemporary cases of state making as well as non-European ones, providing an in-depth analysis of the nature and causes of state making, historically as well as in a modern, global environment. This timely book is an invaluable read for international relations and comparative politics scholars. It will also greatly benefit those teaching advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on state making as it provides a fresh take on the art of state making in a modern world. Contributors include: J. Bartelson, A. Bjoerkdahl, C. Butcher, A. Goenaga, R. Griffiths, J. Grzybowski, M. Hall, J.K. Hanson, A. Learoyd, E. Ravndal, T. Svensson, J. Teorell, A. von Hagen-Jamar

Increasingly, EU market regulation measures have been introduced in the pursuit of economic justice and welfare. This book illustrates how regulation can help to prevent the abuse of dominance, in particular the abuse of public capital by the state. Comprehensive and interdisciplinary, this book presents the theory of regulation in a highly accessible manner. It explains that whilst the state's ability to make major investments, compete with the private sector and target subsidies may be necessary in supporting infrastructure, the wasteful allocation of public monies can also do immense harm by crowding out private investments, distorting private incentives, and helping to foreclose markets. Against this background, Christian Koenig and Bernhard Von Wendland discuss the strengths and weaknesses of EU regulation in the area of competition in the Internal Market, considering both private and public economic activities and market interventions and providing further analysis in light of global competitive pressures. Contemporary and practical, this book will appeal to academics, students and practitioners interested in regulation both in and outside of the EU. Decision-makers, lawmakers and politicians will also benefit from its strong focus on better law making and regulation in order to promote social welfare.

The EU is at a crossroads. Should it choose the path towards protectionism or the path towards free trade? This book convincingly argues that lobbying regulation will be a decisive first step towards fulfilling the European dream of free trade, in accordance with the original purpose of the Treaty of Rome. Without the regulation of lobbyists to try and prevent undue political persuasion, there is a greater risk of abuse in the form of corruption, subsidies and trade barriers, which will come at the expense of consumers, tax payers and competitiveness. This interdisciplinary approach - both theoretical and methodological - offers a wealth of knowledge concerning the effect of lobbying on political decision-making and will appeal to academics across the social sciences, practitioners and policy-makers.