'Jonathan Marcus...stands out from most of his colleagues in the media by making a case for the non-alarmists. His National Front and French Politics is a throughtful study, which in the end, provides a more effective refutation of the myths peddled by Le Pen than would an angry pamphlet.' - Henri Astier, Times Literary Supplement;`Jonathan Marcus's comprehensive account provides plenty of analysis to go with the factual background to the rise of Le Pen and the NF. There are particularly good chapters on the many strands of far-right opinion, from collaborators to extreme Catholics who eventually found a home with the new party.' - Andrew Bell, BBC Worldwide;The extreme right-wing National Front is now France's fourth largest political party. At the 1988 Presidential election, its leader Jean-Marie Le Pen obtained over 14 per cent of the popular vote. Le Pen's xenophobic anti-immigrant message has attracted significant support in France. This book examines the rise of Le Pen's party, and its impact on the French political scene. How far is it a threat to French democracy? And is the National Front now a permanent feature of French politics?

This provocative book challenges many of our ingrained assumptions about the direction of contemporary capitalism and offers fresh perspectives that will inform the development of a new and relevant political economy for our times. The complex and often contradictory world within which modern commodities are produced, sold and consumed is set within the larger context of transnational business and economic developments. The importance of factors such as profitability and globalization is highlighted, and a sophisticated analysis of the contradictions and ironies of the world of modern commodities emerges. Trinidad provides an ideal setting for this study, given its recent oil boom and recession and the subsequent experience of both wealth and poverty.

This provocative book challenges many of our ingrained assumptions about the direction of contemporary capitalism and offers fresh perspectives that will inform the development of a new and relevant political economy for our times. The complex and often contradictory world within which modern commodities are produced, sold and consumed is set within the larger context of transnational business and economic developments. The importance of factors such as profitability and globalization is highlighted, and a sophisticated analysis of the contradictions and ironies of the world of modern commodities emerges. Trinidad provides an ideal setting for this study, given its recent oil boom and recession and the subsequent experience of both wealth and poverty.

One of the important recent developments in Western Europe has been the rise and rapid spread of radical right-wing parties. Crucial to this transformation in West European politics has been the political climate of the 1980s, which was marked by disenchantment with the major social and political institutions and profound distrust in their workings, the weakening and decomposition of electoral alignments, and increased fragmentation and electoral volatility. This has put party systems in the region under heavy pressure from a radical populist right. Distancing themselves from the backward-looking reactionary politics of the traditional extremist right, these parties have become a significant challenge to the established structure and politics of West European democracy today.

As public schools in low income areas fell into disrepair and failed to meet the needs of disadvantaged and minority students, charter schools offered an alternative. These schools were born out of the idea that low income families should be allowed to choose where their children went to school, just the same as high income families. If the public school in the community was unsatisfactory, shouldn't they be allowed to seek out an alternative? The alternatives are surprisingly effective. Charter schools located in low income black and Latinx communities achieve results surpassing both traditional public schools in their areas, and also, in many cases, public schools in more affluent neighbourhoods. In Charter Schools and Their Enemies, celebrated conservative intellectual Thomas Sowell explores the surprising success of this model and the surprising backlash that threatens to dismantle it. Instead of being celebrated for their successes, charter schools are caught in political crosscurrents. In addition to uncovering the success of the charter school movement, Sowell pays careful attention to its adversaries to understand how these schools became such a contentious issue and why the controversy rages on. Teachers' unions, fearful of their hold over government-funded education, fund political candidates to oppose the charter school movement. Liberal educators also oppose charter schools, Sowell argues, because they believe that the school system should indoctrinate the young in progressive politics. Deeply researched and amply documented, Charter Schools and Their Enemies is essential reading for anyone concerned with debates over education in America.

A rediscovery of patriotism as a virtue in line with the core values of democracy in an extremist age "Like you perhaps, I still regard myself as an extremely patriotic person. Which is why I so admired [this book]. . . . It explained my emotion to me, as it might yours to you." -David Brooks, New York Times "Smith superbly illuminates the distinctiveness of the American idea of patriotism and reminds us of how important patriotism is, and how essential to making America better."-Leslie Lenkowsky, Wall Street Journal The concept of patriotism has fallen on hard times. What was once a value that united Americans has become so politicized by both the left and the right that it threatens to rip apart the social fabric. On the right, patriotism has become synonymous with nationalism and an "us versus them" worldview, while on the left it is seen as an impediment to acknowledging important ethnic, religious, or racial identities and a threat to cosmopolitan globalism. Steven B. Smith reclaims patriotism from these extremist positions and advocates for a patriotism that is broad enough to balance loyalty to country with other loyalties. Describing how it is a matter of both the head and the heart, Smith shows how patriotism can bring the country together around the highest ideals of equality and is a central and ennobling disposition that democratic societies cannot afford to do without.

In Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr. will expose all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online "shadow banning" to fake accusations of "hate speech." No topic is spared from political correctness. This is the book that the leftist elites don't want you to read! Trump, Jr. will write about the importance of fighting back and standing up for what you believe in. From his childhood summers in Communist Czechoslovakia that began his political thought process, to working on construction sites with his father, to the major achievements of President Trump's administration, Donald Trump, Jr. spares no details and delivers a book that focuses on success and perseverance, and proves offense is the best defense.

The European Union is grappling with a democracy problem. The succession of crises which have plagued the increasingly executive EU for years, has led to a rising cacophony of voices calling for fundamental change to the integration project. Yet despite the seismic shock of the Brexit referendum and the electoral upsets by nativist parties across the continent, few of the plans for EU reform include concrete proposals to reduce the age-old democratic deficit. This book is concerned with the two-pronged question of how the relationship between citizens, the state and EU institutions has changed, and how direct democratic participation can be improved in a multi-layered Union. As such, this edited volume focuses not on populism per se, nor does it deeply engage with policy and output legitimacy. Rather, the research is concerned with process and polity. Building on the notion of increasing social, economic and political interdependence across borders, this volume asks how a sense of solidarity and European identity can be rescued from the bottom up by politically empowering citizens to 'take back control' of their EU.

As extreme and far right movements become increasingly widespread in many countries, the sociology of social movements is called to confront them. This book addresses the specific challenges entailed by the empirical study of such movements, presenting case studies from Japan, Thailand, England, France, Italy, the USA, and Turkey. Based on empirical fieldwork, the chapters explore the ethics and politics of researching far right movements, considering the researcher's reflexivity and the methodological issues raised by being emotionally linked to a research object that affirms and strives for values that differ markedly from those of the researcher. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in social movements and research methods.

The current economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe is leading to the emergence of significant fragmentation within regions and between countries. The competitive struggle for scarce resources and global markets during the transition to capitalism in Eastern and Central Europe has caused countries to move away from a process of regional convergence which existed under state socialism to regional divergence. This book focuses on regional economic change in Eastern and Central Europe using Slovakia as a case study. It explains the relationship between industrial change and regional development, and discusses fragmentation within the context of the legacy of the state socialist industrialization model. The book interweaves up-to-date empirical analysis with theoretical debates and uses regional case studies to highlight key issues. Reconstructing the Regional Economy examines both the limits and scope of regional capitalist development, documenting the nature and causes of uneven development in Slovakia. It addresses industrial and restructuring strategies, arguing that current progress must be understood within the context of the past, and that the present complex mix of old and new economic and institutional structures contribute significantly to economic fragmentation and divergence. The author criticises shock therapy, and argues that the transition to a market economy cannot simply be achieved through filling the supposed vacuum left by the collapse of central planning. This original and important book will be welcomed by academics and students interested in the economics of transition and by policymakers in Western and Eastern European countries.

Leo Strauss was a political philosopher who died in 1973 but came to came to prominent attention in the United States and also Britain around the beginning of the War in Iraq. Charges began emerging that architects of the war such as Paul Wolfowitz and large numbers of staff in the US State and Defense Departments had studied with, or been influenced by, the academic work of Strauss and his followers. A vague, but powerful, idea was generated in the popular press that a group known as the Straussians had been instrumental in the long-range strategic planning of American foreign policy, both to advance American interests and to encourage democratic revolutions outside the "West."

This volume of essays opens up the topic of Leo Strauss and the Straussians to those outside the relatively narrow circles who have been concerned with him and his followers up to now.

The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world's largest democracies - Brazil, India, and the United States - now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

The first full-scale biography of Robert Welch, who founded the John Birch Society and planted some of modern conservatism's most insidious seeds. Though you may not know his name, Robert Welch (1899-1985)-founder of the John Birch Society-is easily one of the most significant architects of our current political moment. In A Conspiratorial Life, the first full-scale biography of Welch, Edward H. Miller delves deep into the life of an overlooked figure whose ideas nevertheless reshaped the American right. A child prodigy who entered college at age 12, Welch became an unlikely candy magnate, founding the company that created Sugar Daddies, Junior Mints, and other famed confections. In 1958, he funneled his wealth into establishing the organization that would define his legacy and change the face of American politics: the John Birch Society. Though the group's paranoiac right-wing nativism was dismissed by conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley, its ideas gradually moved from the far-right fringe into the mainstream. By exploring the development of Welch's political worldview, A Conspiratorial Life shows how the John Birch Society's rabid libertarianism-and its highly effective grassroots networking-became a profound, yet often ignored or derided influence on the modern Republican Party. Miller convincingly connects the accusatory conservatism of the midcentury John Birch Society to the inflammatory rhetoric of the Tea Party, the Trump administration, Q, and more. As this book makes clear, whether or not you know his name or what he accomplished, it's hard to deny that we're living in Robert Welch's America.

The Ku Klux Klan has peaked three times in American history: after the Civil War, around the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and in the 1920s, when the Klan spread farthest and fastest. Recruiting millions of members even in non-Southern states, the Klan's nationalist insurgency burst into mainstream politics. Almost one hundred years later, the pent-up anger of white Americans left behind by a changing economy has once again directed itself at immigrants and cultural outsiders and roiled a presidential election. In The Politics of Losing, Rory McVeigh and Kevin Estep trace the parallels between the 1920s Klan and today's right-wing backlash, identifying the conditions that allow white nationalism to emerge from the shadows. White middle-class Protestant Americans in the 1920s found themselves stranded by an economy that was increasingly industrialized and fueled by immigrant labor. Mirroring the Klan's earlier tactics, Donald Trump delivered a message that mingled economic populism with deep cultural resentments. McVeigh and Estep present a sociological analysis of the Klan's outbreaks that goes beyond Trump the individual to show how his rise to power was made possible by a convergence of circumstances. White Americans' experience of declining privilege and perceptions of lost power can trigger a political backlash that overtly asserts white-nationalist goals. The Politics of Losing offers a rigorous and lucid explanation for a recurrent phenomenon in American history, with important lessons about the origins of our alarming political climate.

Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" "[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right."-The Atlantic "This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be."-NPR An explosive expose of the right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect-the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan-and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite's power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan's work in teaching others how to divide America into "makers" and "takers." And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan's strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

Nikki Haley has been widely hailed as an emerging force in American politics, her star power burnished over a decade that has seen her move from the national spotlight to the global stage. In Rising Star, political scientist Jason A. Kirk analyzes her ascendance in the Republican party, from her governorship of South Carolina as a woman of color-where she faced extraordinary challenges in a state reckoning with tragedy, race, and its own history-to her elevated profile as Donald Trump's representative to the United Nations, where as the daughter of immigrants she would become the face of his America First policy to the world. This book, in its consideration of a wide range of perspectives, illuminates how Haley's combination of political talents and her identity as an Indian American, Christian, southern woman have made her an unlikely bridge between the Trump years and the GOP's embattled path forward, and, by all accounts, a significant political force.

Conservatism in the Black Community examines the contemporary meanings of Black Conservatism and its influence on black political behavior, providing a basis for understanding the impact this phenomenon has on black political behavior. Lewis analyzes conservatism within the black ideological framework, while also explaining the meaning of conservatism in the black community. While scholars have argued that the level of support for conservatism among blacks is minimal because conservatism is antithetical to black interest, there are a cadre of conservative political intellectuals and political elites in America. Do their views influence those of the wider Black population? Or does the media merely amplify their voices but with little support? What part of contemporary Black conservatism has found a home in the Tea Party movement? Focusing on what conservatism means to Blacks at the grassroots level and in what issue areas Blacks as a whole tend to have more conservative views, this work neither critiques nor praises Black Conservatism. The results of Lewis's mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies will be of strong interest to students and scholars of Black politics, Black studies, and political behavior more generally.

This volume is the first comprehensive examination of African American conservative thought and politics from the late eighteenth century to the present. The essays in the collection explore various aspects of African American conservatism, including biographical studies of abolitionist James Forten, clergymen Henry McNeal Turner and J.H. Jackson, and activists A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Thematic essays in the volume consider southern black conservatism in the late nineteenth century and after World War I, African American success manuals, Ellisonian cultural criticism , the Nation of Islam, and African Americans and the Republican Party after 1964.

During the 2016 election, a new term entered the American political lexicon: the "alt-right," short for "alternative right." Despite the innocuous name, the alt-right is a white-nationalist movement. Yet it differs from earlier racist groups: it is youthful and tech-savvy, obsessed with provocation and trolling, amorphous, predominantly online, and mostly anonymous. And it was energized by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In Making Sense of the Alt-Right, George Hawley provides an accessible introduction to the alt-right, giving vital perspective on the emergence of a group whose overt racism has confounded expectations for a more tolerant America. Hawley explains the movement's origins, evolution, methods, and its core belief in white identity politics. The book explores how the alt-right differs from traditional white nationalism, libertarianism, and other online illiberal ideologies such as neoreaction, as well as from mainstream Republicans and even Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. The alt-right's use of offensive humor and its trolling-driven approach, based in animosity to so-called political correctness, can make it difficult to determine true motivations. Yet through exclusive interviews and a careful study of the alt-right's influential texts, Hawley is able to paint a full picture of a movement that not only disagrees with liberalism but fundamentally rejects most of the tenets of American conservatism. Hawley points to the alt-right's growing influence and makes a case for coming to a precise understanding of its beliefs without sensationalism or downplaying the movement's radicalism.

Conservatism in the Black Community examines the contemporary meanings of Black Conservatism and its influence on black political behavior, providing a basis for understanding the impact this phenomenon has on black political behavior. Lewis analyzes conservatism within the black ideological framework, while also explaining the meaning of conservatism in the black community. While scholars have argued that the level of support for conservatism among blacks is minimal because conservatism is antithetical to black interest, there are a cadre of conservative political intellectuals and political elites in America. Do their views influence those of the wider Black population? Or does the media merely amplify their voices but with little support? What part of contemporary Black conservatism has found a home in the Tea Party movement? Focusing on what conservatism means to Blacks at the grassroots level and in what issue areas Blacks as a whole tend to have more conservative views, this work neither critiques nor praises Black Conservatism. The results of Lewis's mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies will be of strong interest to students and scholars of Black politics, Black studies, and political behavior more generally.