SHORTLISTED FOR THE PARLIAMENTARY BOOK AWARDS 'Thought-provoking and well worth reading' Times Literary Supplement After decades of peace and prosperity, the international order put in place after World War II is rapidly coming to an end. Disastrous foreign wars, global recession, the meteoric rise of China and India and the COVID pandemic have undermined the power of the West's international institutions and unleashed the forces of nationalism and protectionism. In this lucid and groundbreaking analysis, one of Britain's most experienced senior diplomats highlights the key dilemmas Britain faces, from trade to security, arguing that international co-operation and solidarity are the surest ways to prosper in a world more dangerous than ever.

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.

Xi Jinping has proven to be one of the most transformative political leaders of the twenty-first century. After a long career that began at the village level, he became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and China's paramount leader in 2012. Few expected what would come next: a sweeping restructuring of China's political economy and political culture which included anti-corruption campaigns against the Party, and a full recalibration of China's relations with the outside world. In Xi Jinping, Alfred L. Chan offers a comprehensive account of his life and times. Chan discusses Xi's early years as a "princeling" and his ordeal during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. Xi's privileged childhood was shattered during his youth when he was mercilessly tormented as a counter-revolutionary, declared a juvenile delinquent and pauper, ultimately becoming an ordinary peasant. But he clawed his way back up a ladder of success reflecting the changing zeitgeist of the times. He entered politics at age seventeen and accumulated administrative experiences at the county and provincial levels. Chan documents Xi's long path upward through the system, revealing how he built a reputation as an astute leader and a corruption fighter. The second half of the book focuses on the post-2012 period, and Chan pays particular attention to the context surrounding Xi's governance once he consolidated power. He makes clear that Xi's core guiding principle has been Leninism, which prioritizes disciplined party rule above all else. Throughout, Chan applies a range of social scientific theories drawn from comparative politics, international relations theory, public policy, and theories of governance to explain policymaking during an era of turbulent changes. Sweeping in scope and addressing virtually every aspect of Xi's life, this study will be essential for anyone seeking to understand not just Xi himself, but the overlapping global and domestic political contexts that shaped his career and style of rule.

Until two decades ago, the social sciences adhered to the secularisation thesis that stressed the gradual obliteration of religion in the public domain. Recent events show the re-emergence of religions world-wide that has led scholars in challenging the narrative of the modern state and its progress from the religious to the secular domains. The changing place of religion in contemporary politics challenges older notions and concepts of the secular and secularisation process. Yet many initiatives and scholarly works have failed to assess the rise of religion in the context of democratic processes. This volume sets out to fill this scholarly lacuna by offering a conceptual, historical and empirical examination of some of these developments. In trying to map this terrain and spell out the close links between religion, secularism and democracy, this volume examines the developments and challenges of secularism in select countries of Southeast Asia. The fundamental tenets of liberal democracies - rule of law, popular sovereignty, constitutionalism - undergo several configurations in the context of religious pluralism. The aim is to reframe the basic issues of religion and secularisation in a way that their complex reality will be visible in different contexts where the frequency of conflicts related to religion have sharply increased although they may reflect other cultural, political, and socio-economic phenomena.

Looks at the rollout of one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history to show how local governments play a complex role. China's high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history. Despite global media coverage, we know very little about the political process that led the government to invest in the railway program and the reasons for the striking regional and temporal variation in such investments. In Localized Bargaining, Xiao Ma offers a novel theory of intergovernmental bargaining that explains the unfolding of China's unprecedented high-speed railway program. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews, original data sets, and surveys with local officials, Ma details how the bottom-up bargaining efforts by territorial authorities-whom the central bureaucracies rely on to implement various infrastructure projects-shaped the allocation of investment in the railway system. Demonstrating how localities of different types invoke institutional and extra-institutional sources of bargaining power in their competition for railway stations, Ma sheds new light on how the nation's massive bureaucracy actually functions.

With extraordinary access to the Trump White House, Michael Wolff tells the inside story of the most controversial presidency of our time.

The first nine months of Donald Trump’s term were stormy, outrageous―and absolutely mesmerizing. Now, thanks to his deep access to the West Wing, bestselling author Michael Wolff tells the riveting story of how Trump launched a tenure as volatile and fiery as the man himself. In this explosive book, Wolff provides a wealth of new details about the chaos in the Oval Office.

Among the revelations:

• What President Trump’s staff really thinks of him
• What inspired Trump to claim he was wire-tapped by President Obama
• Why FBI director James Comey was really fired
• Why chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner couldn’t be in the same room
• Who is really directing the Trump administration’s strategy in the wake of Bannon’s firing
• What the secret to communicating with Trump is
• What the Trump administration has in common with the movie The Producers

Never before has a presidency so divided the American people. Brilliantly reported and astoundingly fresh, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury shows us how and why Donald Trump has become the king of discord and disunion.

Loch Johnson's new book explores the subject of covert action, often referred to as a "Third Option" between America's use of diplomacy and warfare--a shadowy approach to international affairs based on the controversial use of secret propaganda, political activities, economic sabotage, and paramilitary operations (whether clandestine warfare or assassinations). The three major instruments that guide United States foreign policy are the Treaty Power, the War Power, and the Spy Power. Within the category of Spy Power is the "Third Option" the use of covert action. Ever since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the US has often turned to the third option in the conduct of its international relations. This controversial approach includes covert propaganda campaigns, subversive political activities, economic sabotage, and paramilitary operations ranging from clandestine warfare to the assassination of foreign leaders. From the beginning of the Cold War to the present day, America's intelligence and national security agencies have employed all of these "third option" tools in order to advance America's global interests. In The Third Option, the eminent national security scholar Loch Johnson provides a history of American covert warfare from 1947 to the present. In particular, he focuses on the morality and consequences of America's heavily veiled attempts to shape global affairs through its covert actions. Over the course of the book, a fundamental question comes into focus: Of what value has the Third Option been to the US as a complement to the nation's more open battlefield and diplomatic initiatives? Just as importantly, Johnson exposes the conflict between this controversial approach to achieving America's international objectives and the ideals that the US has always propounded: democracy, human rights, and liberalism. The Third Option closes with a sharp assessment of the policy, measuring its failures versus its successes. A richly detailed synthesis of America's covert action program ever since it became the world's preeminent power, this book serves as an ideal introduction for anyone interested in US foreign and national security policy.

Why our democracies need urgent reform, before it's too late A generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world is once again on the edge of chaos. Demonstrations have broken out from Belgium to Brazil led by angry citizens demanding a greater say in their political and economic future, better education, heathcare and living standards. The bottom line of this outrage is the same; people are demanding their governments do more to improve their lives faster, something which policymakers are unable to deliver under conditions of anaemic growth. Rising income inequality and a stagnant economy are threats to both the developed and the developing world, and leaders can no longer afford to ignore this gathering storm. In Edge of Chaos, Dambisa Moyo sets out the new political and economic challenges facing the world, and the specific, radical solutions needed to resolve these issues and reignite global growth. Dambisa enumerates the four headwinds of demographics, inequality, commodity scarcity and technological innovation that are driving social and economic unrest, and argues for a fundamental retooling of democratic capitalism to address current problems and deliver better outcomes in the future. In the twenty-first century, a crisis in one country can quickly become our own, and fragile economies produce a fragile international community. Edge of Chaos is a warning for advanced and emerging nations alike: we must reverse the dramatic erosion in growth, or face the consequences of a fragmented and unstable global future.

Over 50 full-colour world maps and graphics break down hardcore statistics to provide a compelling analysis of all the political, social, economic and ecological nightmares that keep us awake at night. * The world's car population has grown five times as fast as the human population over the last 50 years. * Wal-Mart's sales revenue exceeds the GDP of 150 countries. * Climate change may put 2.7 billion at risk of armed conflict. * Germany generates more tourists than anywhere else. * Americans use 160 times more water than people in Rwanda. If you want to get behind the headlines and understand the world - from urbanization to globalization, terrorism to tourism, military spending to human rights - The State of the World Atlas is unmatched.

Home to more than 1.2 billion people, living in 54 recognized states, speaking around 3,000 languages, Africa is a diverse and complex continent made up of states which differ in regard to their colonial history, political system, socio-economic development, economic polices and their experience with crises and conflicts. This introduction and overview of African history and politics since decolonization emphasises throughout, the diversity of the continent. Organised thematically to include chapters on decolonization and its legacies, external influences, economics, political systems, inter-African relations, crises, conflicts and conflict management, and Africa's external relations, Martin Welz strikes a fine balance between the use of contextual information, analysis, case studies and examples with theoretical debates in development, politics and global policy. Accessible to students at all levels, it counters histories which offer reductive explanations of complex issues, and offers new insights into the role African actors have played in influencing international affairs beyond the continent.

This is a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary discussion of the connections between language, borders and identities. Looking at a broad, geographically diverse spectrum of border contexts, this volume illustrates a range of methodological approaches. It examines political borders that divide monoglossic and heteroglossic territories, as well as regional and local and symbolic borders. The authors assess the linguistic implications of these borders contexts such as language planning and policy (e.g. for multilingual education and protection of minority languages) and border control (via the chapter on language analysis for the determination of origin, 'LADO'). Each border is unique, making generalisations about how language functions in 'borderlands' difficult to formulate but casting the net as wide as we intend will, however, equip us to develop and refine models of how language is used to construct borders, and to indicate on which side of a border speakers situate themselves. It covers political, socio-psychological and symbolic borders. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach by combining sociolinguistic research with human geography, anthropology and social psychology. It uses international case studies and examples throughout.

Global governance now provides people with recourse for harm through International Grievance Mechanisms, such as the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of the Multilateral Development Banks. Yet little is known about how such mechanisms work. This Element examines how IGMs provide recourse for infringements of three procedural environmental rights: access to information, access to participation, and access to justice in environmental matters, as well as environmental protections drawn from the United Nations Guiding Principles and the World Bank's protection standards. A content analysis of 394 original IAM claims details how people invoke these rights. The sections then unpack how the IAMs provide community engagement through 'problem solving', and 'compliance investigations' that identify whether the harm resulted from the MDBs. Using a database of all known submissions to the IAMs (1,052 claims from 1994 to mid-2019), this Element demonstrate how the IAMs enable people to air their grievances, without necessarily solving their problems.

Heela Najibullah analyzes the Afghan reconciliation processes through the lenses of transrational peace philosophy and Elicitive Conflict Transformation. The research highlights two Afghan governments reconciliation processes in 1986 and 2010 and underlines the political events that shaped the 1986 National Reconciliation Policy, drawing lessons for future processes. The author points out the historical and geopolitical patterns indicating regional and global stakeholders involvement in Afghan politics. Social healing through a middle-out approach is the missing and yet crucial component to achieve sustainable reconciliation in Afghanistan

Seeking to understand why host states treat migrants and refugees inclusively, exclusively, or without any direct engagement, Kelsey P. Norman offers this original, comparative analysis of the politics of asylum seeking and migration in the Middle East and North Africa. While current classifications of migrant and refugee engagement in the Global South mistake the absence of formal policy and law for neglect, Reluctant Reception proposes the concept of 'strategic indifference', where states proclaim to be indifferent toward migrants and refugees, thereby inviting international organizations and local NGOs to step in and provide services on the state's behalf. Using the cases of Egypt, Morocco and Turkey to develop her theory of 'strategic indifference', Norman demonstrates how, by allowing migrants and refugees to integrate locally into large informal economies, and by allowing organizations to provide basic services, host countries receive international credibility while only exerting minimal state resources.

This innovative volume provides an introduction to twelve seminal events in the international relations of East Asia prior to 1900: twelve events that everyone interested in the history of world politics should know. The East Asian historical experience provides a wealth of new and different cases, patterns, and findings that will expand horizons from the Western, Eurocentric experience. Written by an international team of historians and political scientists, these essays draw attention to the China-centered East Asian order - with its long history of dominance - and what this order might tell us about the current epoch.

This innovative volume provides an introduction to twelve seminal events in the international relations of East Asia prior to 1900: twelve events that everyone interested in the history of world politics should know. The East Asian historical experience provides a wealth of new and different cases, patterns, and findings that will expand horizons from the Western, Eurocentric experience. Written by an international team of historians and political scientists, these essays draw attention to the China-centered East Asian order - with its long history of dominance - and what this order might tell us about the current epoch.

On the frontlines of the battle for democracy in China The rise of Hong Kong is the story of a miraculous post-War boom, when Chinese refugees flocked to a small British colony, and, in less than fifty years, transformed it into one of the great financial centers of the world. The unraveling of Hong Kong, on the other hand, shatters the grand illusion of China ever having the intention of allowing democratic norms to take root inside its borders. Hong Kong's people were subjects of the British Empire for more than a hundred years, and now seem destined to remain the subordinates of today's greatest rising power. But although we are witnessing the death of Hong Kong as we know it, this is also the story of the biggest challenge to China's authoritarianism in 30 years. Activists who are passionately committed to defending the special qualities of a home they love are fighting against Beijing's crafty efforts to bring the city into its fold-of making it a centerpiece of its "Greater Bay Area" megalopolis. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, one of America's leading China specialists, draws on his many visits to the city, and knowledge of the history of repression and resistance, to help us understand the deep roots and the broad significance of the events we see unfolding day by day in Hong Kong. The result is a riveting tale of tragedy but also heroism-one of the great David-versus-Goliath battles of our time, pitting determined street protesters against the intransigence of Xi Jinping, the most ambitious leader of China since the days of Mao.

Despite - and perhaps because of - increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

The Politics of Self-Determination examines the territorial restructuring of Europe between 1917 and 1923, when a radically new and highly fragile peace order was established. It opens with an exploration of the peace planning efforts of Great Britain, France, and the United States in the final phase of the First World War. It then provides an in-depth view on the practice of Allied border drawing at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, focussing on a new factor in foreign policymaking-academic experts employed by the three Allied states to aid in peace planning and border drawing. This examination of the international level is juxtaposed with two case studies of disputed regions where the newly drawn borders caused ethnic violence, albeit with different results: the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France in 1918-19, and the Greek-Turkish War between 1919 and 1922. A final chapter investigates the approach of the League of Nations to territorial revisionism and minority rights, thereby assessing the chances and dangers of the Paris peace order over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. Volker Prott argues that at both the international and the local levels, the 'temptation of violence' drove key actors to simplify the acclaimed principle of national self-determination and use ethnic definitions of national identity. While the Allies thus hoped to avoid uncomfortable decisions and painstaking efforts to establish an elusive popular will, local elites, administrations, and paramilitary leaders soon used ethnic notions of identity to mobilise popular support under the guise of international legitimacy. Henceforth, national self-determination ceased to be a tool of peace-making and instead became an ideology of violent resistance.

Since the mid-1990s, Japan's regional economic strategy has transformed. Once characterized by bilateralism, informality, and neomercantilism, Japanese policy has shifted to a new liberal strategy emphasizing regional institution building and rule setting. As two major global powers, China and the United States, wrestle over economic advantages, Japan currently occupies a pivotal position capable of tipping the geoeconomic balance in the region. Japan's New Regional Reality offers a comprehensive analysis of Japan's geoeconomic strategy that reveals the country's role in shaping regional economic order in the Asia-Pacific. Saori N. Katada explains Japanese foreign economic policy in light of both international and domestic dynamics. She points out the hurdles to implementing a state-led liberal strategy, detailing how domestic political and institutional changes have been much slower and stickier than the changing regional economics. Katada highlights state-market relations and shows how big businesses have responded to the country's interventionist policies. The book covers a wide range of economic issues including trade, investment, finance, currency, and foreign aid. Japan's New Regional Reality is a meticulously researched study of the dynamics that have contributed to economic and political realities in the Asia-Pacific today, with significant implications for future regional trends.

This Element provides an explanation for the power of weak states in international politics, focusing on the case of international climate negotiations at the United Nations. The author points to the pitfalls of assuming that weak countries elicit power from their coordinated salience for climate issues. Contrastingly, it is argued that weak states' influence at global climate negotiations depends on the moral authority provided by strong states. The author maintains that weak states' authority is contingent on international vulnerability, which intersects broader domestic discussions of global justice, and pushes the leaders of strong countries to concede power to weak countries. New empirical evidence is shown in support of the theory.

The emergence of the modern Middle East is the result of three complementary historical developments: the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the institution of British and French control in its stead and the nationalist challenges to this colonial scramble. The introduction of international borders that accompanied this process is commonly portrayed as the drawing of lines in the sand, an artificial partitioning that brought diplomatic closure to an otherwise contested historical space. For the past two decades, insights gained from the burgeoning field of borderlands studies have enabled a new generation of scholars to challenge such popular depictions. For them, the region's borderlands were not sites of peripheral activity, but rather liminal spaces criss-crossed by global flows and circulations central to state- and nation-formation across the Middle East. Regimes of Mobility offers a select number of case studies that highlight the connectedness of the politics of borderlands throughout the interwar Middle East.

Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political organization of three non-European international societies from early modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the encounter between these non-European systems and the West. Contrary to unidirectional descriptions of the encounter, these non-Westphalian polities creatively adapted to Western principles of organization and international conduct. By illuminating the encounter of the West and these Eurasian polities, this book serves to question the popular wisdom of modernity, wherein the Western nation-state is perceived as the desired norm, to be replicated in other polities.