Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory Volume II: Living in the Loop brings together the latest research, theory, and applications from W. T. Powers' Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) that proposes that the behavior of a living organism lies in the control of perceived aspects of both itself and its environment. Sections cover theory, the application of PCT to a broad range of disciplines, why perceptual control is fundamental to understanding human nature, a new way to do research on brain processes and behavior, how the role of natural selection in behavior can be demystified, how engineers can emulate human purposeful behavior in robots, and much more. Each chapter includes an author biography to set the context of their work within the development of PCT.

In recent years, rapid globalization, novel technologies and business models, as well as economic and political changes have transformed the international business landscape. This pioneering volume offers a comprehensive discussion of the new global terrain and makes a strong case for the consideration of geopolitics in both the study and practice of modern-day business.Featuring original contributions from experts across the world, this Handbook provides a solid foundation for both understanding and responding to recent changes and trends in global economics, politics, and business. Topics discussed include the shifting nature of international trade, economic growth in emerging economies, voluntary sustainability codes, management in international corporations, organization of mega-events, entrepreneurship and geopolitical risk, and investment law and firm behavior. This volume offers important implications for both the academic and corporate communities. It will appeal to professors and students of international business and management, economics and political sciences. Offering groundbreaking perspectives that drive contemporary business strategy, this book is also highly valuable to global managers, entrepreneurs and policy makers. Contributors: N.O. Agola, A. Barron, R. Bhar, A.M. Bobillo, H. Bonin, M. Chand, M. Chirwa, F. Corsini, L. Curran, J. Ghosh, J.D. Greenberg, E. Kalipeni, A. Liberatore, R.E. Looney, F. Lopez-Iturriaga, V.V. Miller, L. Mudunuru, M. Muller, J.M.S. Munoz, B. Nikolova, L.A. Perez-Batres, M. Pettus, M.J. Pisani, J. Rowney, C. Steyaert, F. Tejerina-Gaite, M. Tortora, L. Wilks, D. Windsor, E.D. Winet

Turkey is a country with a history of multiparty electoral competition going back to 1950, longer than many other nations in the world. Until recently, it was often perceived as a model country that showed the feasibility of democratic governance in a Muslim-majority society. However, the rise of religious-nationalist populism and sociopolitical polarization has resulted in an authoritarian turn that has stifled political liberalization. Turkish foreign policy has had strong linkages with the West, but now exhibits a more independent and assertive position. Turkish national identity remains exclusionary, as citizens not belonging to the dominant ethnic and religious groups face various levels of discrimination. Political violence persists in the forms of state repression, insurgent attacks, and terrorism; nevertheless, Turkish civil society continues to be resilient. The economy has exhibited sustained levels of growth, though it remains vulnerable to crises. The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics includes in-depth analyses of all these issues in conversation with the broader scholarly literature on authoritarianism and democratization, political economy, electoral politics, politics of identity, social movements, foreign policy, and the politics of art. With contributions by leading experts, the Handbook is an authoritative source offering state-of-the-art reviews of the scholarship on Turkish politics. The volume is an analytical, comprehensive, and comparative overview of contemporary politics in a country that literally and figuratively epitomizes "being at the crossroads."

Focused on understanding the key underlying group processes that contribute to youth sport experiences, The Power of Groups in Youth Sport provides an innovative and expansive overview of the research in group dynamics within youth sports. The first section of the book examines topics relating to forming and structuring groups, including team selection, athlete socialization, normative expectations, roles, coach and athlete leadership, social identity, and more. The second section reviews concepts associated with group functioning and management, such as cohesion, subgroups, motivational climate, teamwork, and team building. This book concludes with a series of chapters focused on specific developmental considerations in youth sports that are often overlooked in group dynamics research including parental involvement, bullying and hazing, mental health, ,and disability and accessibility.

Moscow has progressively replaced geopolitics with geoeconomics as power is recognised to derive from the state's ability to establish a privileged position in strategic markets and transportation corridors. The objective is to bridge the vast Eurasian continent to reposition Russia from the periphery of Europe and Asia to the centre of a new constellation. Moscow's 'Greater Europe' ambition of the previous decades produced a failed Western-centric foreign policy culminating in excessive dependence on the West. Instead of constructing Gorbachev's 'Common European Home', the 'leaning-to-one-side' approach deprived Russia of the market value and leverage needed to negotiate a more favourable and inclusive Europe. Eurasian integration offers Russia the opportunity to address this 'overreliance' on the West by using the Russia's position as a Eurasian state to advance its influence in Europe. Offering an account steeped in Russian economic statecraft and power politics, this book offers a rare glimpse into the dominant narratives of Russian strategic culture. It explains how the country's outlook adjusts to the ongoing realignment towards Asia while engaging in a parallel assessment of Russia's interactions with other significant actors. The author offers discussion both on Russian responses and adaptations to the current power transition and the ways in which the economic initiatives promoted by Moscow in its project for a 'Greater Eurasia' reflect the entrepreneurial foreign policy strategy of the country.

Is the idea of the "Middle East" simply a geopolitical construct conceived by the West to serve particular strategic and economic interests--or can we identify geographical, historical, cultural, and political patterns to indicate some sort of internal coherence to this label? While the term has achieved common usage, no one studying the region has yet addressed whether this conceptualization has real meaning--and then articulated what and where the Middle East is, or is not.
This volume fills the void, offering a diverse set of voices--from political and cultural historians, to social scientists, geographers, and political economists--to debate the possible manifestations and meanings of the Middle East. At a time when geopolitical forces, social currents, and environmental concerns have brought attention to the region, this volume examines the very definition and geographic and cultural boundaries of the Middle East in an unprecedented way.

A powerful personal testimony and an urgent call for Israel to change direction, from an unexpected source: the former director of the internal security service, Shin Bet.

Raised on a kibbutz by parents who had fled the Holocaust, Ami Ayalon’s life exemplified the Zionist dream. His commitment to his country propelled a meteoric career, culminating in being named commander of the navy and receiving the Medal of Valour, Israel’s highest military decoration. All the time, he remained a staunch supporter of his country’s policies.

Then he was appointed director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and the unexpected happened. Forced to try and understand the lives and motivations of Palestinians for the first time, he gained empathy for ‘the enemy’ and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose.

He came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel’s civil society while heaping humiliation upon its neighbours. In this deeply personal journey of discovery, Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspectives from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own, and draws radical conclusions about what Israel must do to achieve relative peace and security.

Violence against women has been a focus of transnational advocacy networks since the early 1980s, and the United Nations has, in intervening years, passed a series of resolutions to condemn, prevent, investigate, and punish this violence. Member states have committed to implementing this agenda. Yet, despite this buy-in at the global level, implementation at the domestic level remains uneven. Scholars have found that states are more likely to translate global standards into national laws when pressured by women's movements and international organizations. However, a dearth of research on the implementation - at the national and street-levels - of these international women's rights norms hampers an understanding of what happens after states pass laws. In Africa, where most states have not prioritized the prevention of violence against women, and the majority of perpetrators act with impunity, there is a major implementation gap. This gap is acute in some post-conflict countries on the continent. Thus, despite the presence of laws on various forms of violence against women in most African countries, justice remains inaccessible to most victims. In Global Norms and Local Action, Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and why two post-conflict states in Africa, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, have differed in their responses to rape and domestic violence. Specifically, she looks at the roles of the United Nations and women's movements in the establishment of specialized criminal justice sector agencies, and the referral of cases for prosecution. She argues that variation in implementation in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire can be explained by the levels of international and domestic pressures that states face and by the favorability of domestic political and institutional conditions. Medie's study is based on interviews with over 300 policymakers, bureaucrats, staff at the UN and NGOs, police officers, and survivors of domestic violence and rape - an unprecedented depth of research into women's rights and gender violence norm implementation in post-conflict countries. Furthermore, through her interviews with survivors of violence, Medie explains not only how states implement anti-rape and anti-domestic violence norms, but also how women experience and are affected by these norms. She draws on this research to recommend that states adopt a holistic approach to addressing violence against women.

George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

Michael Wolff, author of the bombshell bestseller Fire and Fury, once again takes us inside the Trump presidency to reveal a White House under siege. Just one year into Donald Trump's term as president, Michael Wolff told the electrifying story of a White House consumed by controversy, chaos and intense rivalries. Fire and Fury, an instant sensation, defined the first phase of the Trump administration; now, in Siege, Wolff has written an equally essential and explosive book about a presidency that is under fire from almost every side. At the outset of Trump's second year as president, his situation is profoundly different. No longer tempered by experienced advisers, he is more impulsive and volatile than ever. But the wheels of justice are inexorably turning: Robert Mueller's 'witch hunt' haunts Trump every day, and other federal prosecutors are taking a deep dive into his business affairs. Many in the political establishment - even some members of his own administration - have turned on him and are dedicated to bringing him down. The Democrats see victory at the polls, and perhaps impeachment, in front of them. Trump, meanwhile, is certain he is invincible, making him all the more exposed and vulnerable. Week by week, as Trump becomes increasingly erratic, the question that lies at the heart of his tenure becomes ever more urgent: Will this most abnormal of presidencies at last reach the breaking point and implode? Both a riveting narrative and a brilliant front-lines report, Siege provides an alarming and indelible portrait of a president like no other. Surrounded by enemies and blind to his peril, Trump is a raging, self-destructive inferno ? and the most divisive leader in American history.

The world's fastest growing continent demographically, Africa displays nearly all the features of today's global security challenges: armed conflict, terrorism, irregular migration, organized crime, great power competition, public discontent, and economic turbulence. John Siko and Jonah Victor present their lessons from professional practice and pedagogical approach from the classroom in a concise guidebook that leads students and professionals through the most important issues, dynamics, challenges, and considerations for analysing and planning responses to security developments in Africa. This book provides issue-by-issue primers on the causes and consequences of Africa's security challenges that include: -how to anticipate security problems across current political and economic events -how to analyse African security institutions and military capabilities -how to understand historical trends across the African continent and appreciate unique variations among countries. -how to identify key drivers of future trends -how to connect security analysis to policy planning Learning is supported through the following features: - Thematic chapters which are optimized to help the reader quickly connect to the key concepts and analytic frameworks within the field. - The most relevant historical case studies, enabling students to engage in sophisticated analysis and discussion. - Connections and contrasts between the situations in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, which are traditionally studied separately. - Special sections on understanding race and ethnicity, and advice on traveling in Africa. - Chapter-end checklists of key questions to enable practical engagement with the topics covered.

As America's expeditionary force-in-readiness, the US Marine Corps operates an eclectic mix of fixed-wing, rotary-wing, tiltrotor and unmanned aircraft to support the marine rifleman on the ground. The first two decades of the 21st century have seen an almost complete transformation of the marine air wings, as Cold War-era legacy aircraft yield to digital-age replacements. In Harpia's first book dedicated to a North American air arm, Joe Copalman explains the significance of each aircraft transition in the Marine Corps over the previous 20 years - community by community - on the Marine Air-Ground Task Force and its ability to conduct amphibious and expeditionary warfare. While some of these transitions, like that of the KC-130T to KC-130J and AH-1W to AH-1Z, have been incremental, evolutionary steps up, others like the tandem-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight to the tiltrotor MV-22 Osprey and the introduction of the F-35 Lightning II to replace all three of the Marine Corps' tactical jets have revolutionised the way the service fights. In addition to introducing newer, vastly more capable and connected aircraft into its air wings, the Marine Corps has also invested heavily in keeping its remaining legacy fleets at the cutting edge of lethality and survivability throughout the final days of each type's service. Utilising a before-and-after approach, Copalman guides the reader through every transition in Modern USMC Air Power, examining what each legacy aircraft brought to the fight, and how the service's newer platforms have improved upon those capabilities, especially when aided by new constructs like precision-guided ordnance and digital interoperability.

Between 1968 and 1975, there was a subtle thawing of relations between East and West, for which Brezhnev coined the name Detente, and - perhaps - a chance to end the Cold War. The leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, hoped to forge a new relationship between East and West. Yet, the greatest changes of the era took place outside the sphere of international diplomacy. The 1960s brought social collision across the world, from the anti-war protests in America to the student demonstrations on the streets of Paris, and Mao Tsetung's Red Guards in China. A new generation, whom advertising executives dubbed the baby-boomers, brought new attitudes to towards sex, gender, race, the environment and religion. In this book, Richard Crowder explores the years of Detente, and introduces us to the key players of the era, whose stories form the narrative of this book.

The area between two countries, or at the edges of a civilization, has been called many things--frontier, backcountry, and most recently, the borderland. Even though borderlands are frequently located at the peripheries of empires and nations, they nevertheless shape how centers of national power-cities, national capitols, and so forth-have defined their relation to issues such as territorial expansion, sovereignty, immigration, labor, community formation, difference, and race and ethnicity. And in this global landscape, the borderlands area can teach a lot about how societies interact and how nations came to be as they are. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on borderlands, focusing on borderland relationships--transnational or trans-cultural explorations of the many peoples and perspectives within borderlands regions.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, uncovers a systematic campaign to persecute Assange. He reveals that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that the prison has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer's compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow.

Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics argues that as much as the 'Congo crisis' (1960-1965) was a Cold War battleground, so too was it a battleground for Southern Africa's decolonisation. This book provides a transnational history of African decolonisation, apartheid diplomacy, and Southern African nationalist movements. It answers three central questions. First, what was the nature of South African involvement in the Congo crisis? Second, what was the rationale for this involvement? Third, how did South Africans perceive the crisis? Innovatively, the book shifts the focus on the Congo crisis away from Cold War intervention and centres it around African decolonisation and regional geopolitics.

Recent years have witnessed the most substantial changes in the world system of states and their boundaries since World War II. The key division between the states in the world system the former deep ideological divide between East and West has disappeared. The border between Finland and Russia was a frontier between East and West and had a long history as a fundamental dividing line between contrasting cultural and political systems. Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness is the first geographical analysis of how this critical border evolved. This original and well--illustrated book is much more than a local study. It presents both a theoretically informed analysis of the construction of territories and their boundaries and a richly detailed geohistory of the changing geography of Finland. It traces the nature of the nation--building process, the rise of the nation state and the changing position of this emerging new state in the world geopolitical landscape. The history of the construction of the Finnish Russian border is analyzed on the basis of modern geopolitical and social theory, leading to an interpretation of the changing role of the boundary in the socio--spatial consciousness of the Finnish people. This important theoretical analysis is a key reformulation of boundary studies as well as a fascinating experienced examination of a critical geographical fault--line in world history. It is essential reading for postgraduates of political and cultural geography, history, international relations, Russian studies, as well as for those with an interest in international politics.

By delving into the history of geopolitics and bringing us up to date with cutting-edge case studies looking at infrastructure, terrain, and maps, this book will dispel simplistic and misleading notions about the nature of how humans interact with the environment. Stops on the way will include critical geopolitics, religious geopolitics, popular geopolitics, feminist geopolitics, and, newest of all, critical quantitative geopolitics. More importantly, it uncovers new areas of research for the next generation of researchers, showing how critical and quantitative methods can be applied to look at how geography and war relate to diverse areas such as disease, sport, dispossession, and immigration.

The NATO occupation of Afghanistan is over, and a balance-sheet can be drawn. These essays on war and peace in the region reveal Tariq Ali at his sharpest and most prescient. Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan became the 'good war.' But a stalemate ensued, and the Taliban waited out the NATO contingents. Today, with the collapse of the puppet regime in Kabul, what does the future hold for a traumatised Afghan people? Will China become the dominant influence in the country? Tariq Ali has been following the wars on Afghanistan for forty years. He opposed Soviet military intervention in 1979, predicting disaster. He was also a fierce critic of its NATO sequel, 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. In a series of trenchant commentaries, he described the tragedies inflicted on Afghanistan, as well as the semi-Talibanisation and militarisation of neighbouring Pakistan. Most of his predictions proved accurate. The Forty Year War in Afghanistan brings together the best of his writings and includes a new introduction.

Are we losing a war few of us realize we're fighting? Jim Sciutto, CNN's Chief National Security Correspondent, reveals the invisible fronts that make up 21st century warfare, from disinformation campaigns to advanced satellite weapons. Poisoned dissidents. Election interference. Armed invasions. International treaties thrown into chaos. Secret military buildups. Hackers and viruses. Weapons deployed in space. China and Russia (and Iran and North Korea) spark news stories by carrying out bold acts of aggression and violating international laws and norms. Isn't this just bad actors acting badly? That kind of thinking is outdated and dangerous. Emboldened by their successes, these countries are, in fact, waging a brazen, global war on the US and the West. This is a new Cold War, which will not be won by those who fail to realize they are fighting it. The enemies of the West understand that while they are unlikely to win a shooting war, they have another path to victory. And what we see as our greatest strengths-open societies, military innovation, dominance of technology on Earth and in space, longstanding leadership in global institutions-these countries are undermining or turning into weaknesses. In The Shadow War, CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto provides us with a revealing and at times disturbing guide to this new international conflict. This Shadow War is already the greatest threat to America's national security, even though most Americans know little or nothing about it. With on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine to the South China Sea, from a sub under the Arctic to unprecedented access to America's Space Command, Sciutto draws on his deep knowledge, high-level contacts, and personal experience as a journalist and diplomat to paint the most comprehensive and vivid picture of a nation targeted by a new and disturbing brand of warfare. Thankfully, America is adapting and fighting back. In The Shadow War, Sciutto introduces readers to the dizzying array of soldiers, sailors, submariners and their commanders, space engineers, computer scientists, civilians, and senior intelligence officials who are on the front lines of this new kind of forever war. Intensive and disturbing, this invaluable and important work opens our eyes and makes clear that the war of the future is already here.

This book provides a sophisticated overview of the theories, concepts and methods central to the complex and contentious field of International Environmental Politics (IEP). Ronald B Mitchell carefully introduces students to the political processes involved in both causing and resolving international environmental problems. Each fully integrated chapter: Links environmental policy to politics, bringing in a wide range of practical real-life examples Deepens students' theoretical understanding, helping them to identify and explain international environmental problems and their solutions Goes beyond description and develops students' ability to evaluate claims about outcomes in international environmental politics through empirical testing. A rounded, in-depth examination of IEP, this book has been specifically written for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in global environmental politics and modules of broader international relations programs. SAGE Series on the Foundations of International Relations Series Editors: Walter Carlsnaes Uppsala University, Sweden Jeffrey T. Checkel Simon Fraser University, Canada International Advisory Board: Peter J. Katzenstein Cornell University, USA Emanuel Adler University of Toronto, Canada Martha Finnemore George Washington University, USA Andrew Hurrell Oxford University, UK G. John Ikenberry Princeton University, USA Beth Simmons Harvard University, USA Steve Smith University of Exeter, UK Michael Zuern Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany The SAGE Foundations series fills the gap between narrowly-focused research monographs and broad introductory texts, providing graduate students with state-of-the-art, critical overviews of the key sub-fields within International Relations: International Political Economy, International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Organization, Normative IR Theory, International Environmental Politics, Globalization, and IR Theory. Explicitly designed to further the transatlantic dialogue fostered by publications such as the SAGE Handbook of International Relations, the series is written by renowned scholars drawn from North America, continental Europe and the UK. The books are intended as core texts on advanced courses in IR, taking students beyond the basics and into the heart of the debates within each field, encouraging an independent, critical approach and signposting further avenues of research.

What makes a state? This question has attracted more and more attention in recent years with Catalan's illegal vote for independence from Spain and Palestine's ongoing search for international recognition. And while Scotland chose to remain with the United Kingdom, discussions of independence have only continued as the ramifications of the later Brexit vote begin to set in. As James Ker-Lindsay and Mikulas Fabry show in this new addition to the What Everyone Needs to Know (R) series, the road to statehood does not run smooth. Declaring independence is only the first step; gaining both local and global acceptance is necessary before a state can become truly independent. The prospect of losing territory is usually not welcomed by the parent state, and any such threat to an existing culture and its economy is often met with resistance-armed or otherwise. Beyond this immediate conflict, the international community often refuses to accept new states without proof of defined territory, a settled population, and effective government, which frequently translates to a democratic one with demonstrated respect for human rights. Covering the legal, political, and practical issues of secession and state creation, Ker-Lindsay and Fabry provide an essential guide to this timely topic.

In this groundbreaking study, international relations scholar Hicham Tohme offers a critique of current academic, scholarly, and public understandings of Russia's geostrategic outlook through the lens of the ongoing Syrian crisis. This critique is based on a reassessment of four key concepts that shape our knowledge of Russia's foreign policy. First, the Westphalian state system is an inadequate a point of reference when applied to a country that still perceives itself and behaves as an empire. Second, justifying aggressive foreign policy as a counterweight to a perceived deficiency in the legitimacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin's leadership oversimplifies Russian political culture and public values, which do not overlap with Western norms and institutions. Third, analysis of Russian foreign policy, as well as of Russia's global role, remains restricted to what can be best described as a 'post-Cold War framework', a static image of global history for the past thirty years. Finally, most geopolitical and foreign affairs analyses focus on diplomatic and foreign policy rhetoric, rather than foreign policy praxis, as the primary data on which to draw conclusions. Offering an alternate explanation, this study examines Russia's intervention in the Syrian crisis to reveal practices that have come to characterize its global strategy and outlook for the past decade. As such, Russian policy in Syria will be presented as part of a praxis that can describe many facets of Russian global disposition. This clearly places geopolitical practices, not rhetoric, at the heart of the analysis. Further, this book relies on the concept of habitus to explain how these practices inhere in a long tradition of Russian behavior, advancing the notion that they must be understood as part of a historical continuum of Russia's political culture, mainly when it comes to its perception of its neighbors. By adopting a non-Westphalian framework and escaping the epistemological and methodological foundations of traditional foreign policy analysis, this book seeks to answer two key questions: How can we best describe Russia's geostrategic predispositions? And how can we understand Russia's involvement in the Syrian crisis in light of this analysis?

The equilibrium and understanding between India and China that was built on the premise that both were at the same level of development, and hence need to give full play to their complementarities and potentialities, has seemingly shifted, owing to the balance of power favouring China. Finding new equilibrium and understanding will not be easy given India`s asymmetrical relationship with China. The nature of India-China coexistence, cooperation and competition will be determined by factors such as how quickly the narrative of India's rise regains traction, India and China`' relations with major and middle powers, strategic and economic partnerships with major regional blocks, India's role in global supply chains, and the Quad and Indo-Pacific Strategy. This book arranges author B. R. Deepak's articles from the Sunday Guardian into eight sections, exploring the multi-faceted relationship.