A Search for Sovereignty maps a new approach to world history by examining the relation of law and geography in European empires between 1400 and 1900. Lauren Benton argues that Europeans imagined imperial space as networks of corridors and enclaves, and that they constructed sovereignty in ways that merged ideas about geography and law. Conflicts over treason, piracy, convict transportation, martial law, and crime created irregular spaces of law, while also attaching legal meanings to familiar geographic categories such as rivers, oceans, islands, and mountains. The resulting legal and spatial anomalies influenced debates about imperial constitutions and international law both in the colonies and at home. This original study changes our understanding of empire and its legacies and opens new perspectives on the global history of law.

No conflict in the world has lasted as long, generated as many news headlines, or incited as much controversy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, despite, or perhaps because of, the degree of international attention it receives, the conflict is still widely misunderstood. While Israelis and Palestinians and their respective supporters trade accusations, many outside observers remain confused by the conflict's complexity and perplexed by the passion it arouses. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (R) offers an even-handed and judicious guide to the world's most intractable dispute. Rather than presenting a traditional, narrative history, this book employs an accessible question-and-answer format. Writing in an engaging, jargon-free style, Dov Waxman, a leading expert on the Middle East, provides clear and concise answers to common questions, from the most basic to the most contentious. Covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins to the latest developments of the twenty-first century, this book explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides. Readers will learn what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about, how it has evolved over time, and why it continues to defy diplomatic efforts at a resolution.

In 2011, a series of anti-government uprisings shook the Middle East and North Africa in what would become known as the Arab Spring. Few could predict that these convulsions, initially hailed in the West as a triumph of democracy, would give way to brutal civil war, the terrors of the Islamic State, and a global refugee crisis. But, as New York Times bestselling author Scott Anderson shows, the seeds of catastrophe had been sown long before. In this gripping account, Anderson examines the myriad complex causes of the region's profound unraveling, tracing the ideological conflicts of the present to their origins in the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 and beyond. From this investigation emerges a rare view into a land in upheaval through the eyes of six individuals-the matriarch of a dissident Egyptian family; a Libyan Air Force cadet with divided loyalties; a Kurdish physician from a prominent warrior clan; a Syrian university student caught in civil war; an Iraqi activist for women's rights; and an Iraqi day laborer-turned-ISIS fighter. A probing and insightful work of reportage, Fractured Lands offers a penetrating portrait of the contemporary Arab world and brings the stunning realities of an unprecedented geopolitical tragedy into crystalline focus.

Despite the long and intimate history of engagement along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's North-West, this area and its relationship to the world remains poorly understood in the West's popular imagination. Through the construction of a collage of historical narratives and intense ethnographic encounters, Marsden and Hopkins argue that the simplistic stereotypes and tropes that all too often masquerade as knowledge about the Frontier not only conceal a more complex reality, but are also a source of the problems that local and international actors alike face there. Not some simple isolated depot of radical terrorists or instrumental tribesmen, the Frontier is a space of richly textured meaning, constructed through a history of movement of its inhabitants and their understanding of the world beyond. Fragments of the Afghan Frontier offers a corrective to simplistic understanding both of the region's history and its current realities, leaving the reader with a deeper understanding of the ever-evolving complexity of this globally significant region.

This book provides an explanation of Chinese policy towards the South China Sea, and argues that this has been sculpted by the changing dynamics of the law of the sea in conjunction with regional geopolitical flux. The past few decades have witnessed a bifurcated trend in China's management of territorial disputes. Over the years, while China gradually calmed and settled most land-border disputes with its neighbors, disputes on the ocean frontier continued to simmer in a seething cauldron. China's Policy towards the South China Sea attributes the distinctive path of China's approach to maritime disputes to a unique factor - the law of the sea (LOS) as the "rules of the road" in the ocean. By deconstructing the concept of "sovereignty" and treating the LOS as an evolving regime, the book examines how the changing dynamics of the LOS regime have complicated and reshaped the nature and content of sovereign disputes in the ocean regime as well as the options of settlement. Applying the findings to the South China Sea case, the author traces the learning curve on which China has embarked to comprehend the complexity of the dispute accordingly and finds that it is the dynamic interaction of the law of the sea regime and the geopolitical conditions that has driven the evolution of China's South China Sea policy. This book will be of great interest to students of Chinese and Asian politics, international law, international relations and security studies.

Brexit. Trump. LePen. The Five Star Movement. The recent success of populist movements and politicians is extraordinary, though the rise of populism is understandable in light of increasing political polarization, disappointing politicians, and exhausting election campaigns. With the future trajectory of democracy uncertain, two important questions remain unanswered. How did we get here? And why did we get here? Exploring how and why populism succeeded, John Agnew and Michael Shin consider the reasons for the Brexit vote, who voted-and who did not vote -for Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, and the rise of an Italian populist government, Through comparative geographical analyses, the authors literally and figuratively map the rise of populism across the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Italy. Geography tells us who the people are who have supported populism and the limits and possibilities of its claim to represent all of "the people," wherever they are. Organized around recurring central themes of turnout, leadership, and media, and using compelling maps, their book encourages thought and discussion on an increasingly important topic-and on the future of democracy itself.

Collaborative Advantage offers a bold new take on the drivers and consequences of globalization, both for innovation in renewable energy industries and domestic politics. In an era of rapid international economic integration, how do countries interact, innovate, and compete in industries, like energy, that are fundamental to national interests? In Collaborative Advantage, Jonas Nahm examines the development of the wind and solar industries, two historically important sectors that have long been the target of ambitious public policy. As wind and solar grew from cottage industries into lucrative global sectors of geopolitical importance, China, Germany, and the United States each developed distinct constellations of firms with starkly different technical capabilities. The book shows that globalization itself has reinforced such distinct national patterns of industrial specialization. Economically, globalization has allowed domestic firms to specialize in specific activities because of new opportunities to collaborate with firms from abroad. Politically, new possibilities for specialization have allowed firms to repurpose existing domestic institutions for application in new industries. Against the backdrop of policy efforts that have generally failed to grasp the cross-national nature of innovation, the book offers a novel explanation for both the causes of changes in the global organization of innovation and their impact on domestic politics. As interdependence in global supply chains has again come under fire in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Collaborative Advantage challenges the notion that globalization is primarily about competition between nations, highlighting instead the central role of international collaboration in the global economy, particularly in clean energy industries critical to solving the climate crisis.

Uncertainty surrounds every major decision in international politics. Yet there is almost always room for reasonable people to disagree about what that uncertainty entails. No one can reliably predict the outbreak of armed conflict, forecast economic recessions, anticipate terrorist attacks, or estimate the countless other risks that shape foreign policy choices. Many scholars and practitioners therefore believe that it is better to keep foreign policy debates focused on the facts - that it is, at best, a waste of time to debate uncertain judgments that will often prove to be wrong. In War and Chance, Jeffrey A. Friedman shows how foreign policy officials often try to avoid the challenge of assessing uncertainty, and argues that this behavior undermines high-stakes decision making. Drawing on an innovative combination of historical and experimental evidence, he explains how foreign policy analysts can assess uncertainty in a manner that is theoretically coherent, empirically meaningful, politically defensible, practically useful, and sometimes logically necessary for making sound choices. Each of these claims contradicts widespread skepticism about the value of probabilistic reasoning in international politics, and shows how placing greater emphasis on assessing uncertainty can improve nearly any foreign policy debate. A clear-eyed examination of the logic, psychology, and politics of assessing uncertainty, War and Chance provides scholars and practitioners with new foundations for understanding one of the most controversial elements of foreign policy discourse.

A novel analysis that combines traditional theories on anti-Semitism with evidence from 76 nations to explain the determinants that drive discrimination against Jews. Why Do People Discriminate against Jews? provides a data-rich analysis of the causes of discrimination against Jews across the globe. Using the tools of comparative political science, Jonathan Fox and Lev Topor examine the causes of both government-based and societal discrimination against Jews in 76 countries. As they stress, anti-Semitism is an attitude, but discrimination is an action. In examining anti-Jewish discrimination, they combine ideas and theories from classic studies of anti-Semitism with social science theories on the causes of discrimination. On the one hand, conspiracy theories, a major topic in the anti-Semitism literature, are relatively unexplored in the social science literature as a potential instigator of discrimination. On the other, social science theories developed to explain how governments justify discrimination against Muslims are rarely formally applied to the processes that lead to discrimination against Jews. Fox and Topor conclude by identifying three potential causes of discrimination: religious causes, anti-Zionism, and belief in conspiracy theories about Jewish power and world domination. They conclude that while all three influence discrimination against Jews, belief in conspiracy theories is the strongest determinant. The most rigorous and geographically wide-ranging analysis of discrimination against Jews to date, this book reshapes our understanding of the persecution of religious minorities in general and the Jewish people in particular.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, globalization - both the process and the idea - bestrode the world. Widely acclaimed by political and economic pundits as the most important phenomenon of our time, it took the world by storm. Two decades later, it has come under sustained attack by the re-invigorated forces of the extreme right and radical left. Does globalization still matter in our unsettled world? Responding in the affirmative, this study develops and applies a new framework of an 'engaged theory of globalization' to analyze some of today's most pressing global challenges: the rise of national populism, ecological degradation, rapid urbanization, new sources of insecurity, and the changing landscape of higher education. Offering a comprehensive appraisal of globalization in our unsettled times, the authors explain why and how transplanetary interrelations continue to matter in a world that is wavering between globalist expansion and nationalist retrenchment.

The book is about assessing the effectiveness of a traditional UN Peace Operation. The book first goes on to develop a conceptual framework for the evaluation of UN peace operations and apply that to assess the performance of a traditional UN Peace Operation with UNIFIL as a case study. The author relies on empirical data, supported by perceptions and practical experiences of peacekeepers and 'subject matter experts' at both the operational and tactical levels using a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative analysis. The author proves that UNIFIL can be assessed to be a satisfactorily successful UN Peace Operation. He ends the book with a few major takeaways and offers actionable recommendations to the practitioners of peacekeeping and for future reform of UN peace operations. This book is the first of its kind by a former Indian peacekeeper who holds a PhD from Tilburg University, the Netherland.

Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime's agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in such regimes gives rise to the "dictator's dilemma," where autocrats do not know the level of opposition they face and cannot effectively neutralize domestic threats to their rule. The dilemma has led scholars to believe that autocracies are likely to be short-lived. Yet, some autocracies have found ways to mitigate the dictator's dilemma. As Martin K. Dimitrov shows in Dictatorship and Information, substantial variability exists in the survival of nondemocratic regimes, with single-party polities having the longest average duration. Offering a systematic theory of the institutional solutions to the dictator's dilemma, Dimitrov argues that single-party autocracies have fostered channels that allow for the confidential vertical transmission of information, while also solving the problems associated with distorted information. To explain how this all works, Dimitrov focuses on communist regimes, which have the longest average lifespan among single-party autocracies and have developed the most sophisticated information-gathering institutions. Communist regimes face a variety of threats, but the main one is the masses. Dimitrov therefore examines the origins, evolution, and internal logic of the information-collection ecosystem established by communist states to monitor popular dissent. Drawing from a rich base of evidence across multiple communist regimes and nearly 100 interviews, Dimitrov reshapes our understanding of how autocrats learn-or fail to learn-about the societies they rule, and how they maintain-or lose-power.

Amid pervasive and toxic language, and equally ugly ideas, suggesting that migrants are invaders and human mobility is an aberration, one might imagine that human beings are naturally sedentary: that the desire to move from one's birthplace is abnormal. As the contributors to this volume attest, however, migration and human mobility are part and parcel of the world we live in, and the continuous flow of people and exchange of cultures are as old as the societies we have built together. Together, the chapters in this volume emphasise the diversity of the origins, consequences and experiences of human mobility in the Middle East. From multidisciplinary perspectives and through case studies, the contributors offer the reader a deeper understanding of current as well as historical incidences of displacement and forced migration. In addition to offering insights on multiple root causes of displacement, the book also addresses the complex challenges of host-refugee relations, migrants' integration and marginalisation, humanitarian agencies, and the role and responsibility of states. Cross-cutting themes bind several chapters together: the challenges of categories; the dynamics of control and contestation between migrants and states at borders; and the persistence of identity issues influencing regional patterns of migration.

Featuring a new foreword that brings the book up to date Rare earths are elements that are found in the Earth's crust, and are vital ingredients for the production of a wide variety of high tech, defense, and green technologies-everything from iPhones and medical technologies to wind turbines, efficiency lighting, smart bombs, and submarines. While they are not particularly "rare" in availability, they are difficult and expensive to mine. Yet, China has managed to gain control over an estimated 97 percent of the rare earth industry since the 1990s through cheap production, high export taxes, and artificial limitations of supply. Rare earths, and China's monopoly over them, became international news after China "unofficially" curtailed exports to Japan, the United States, and Europe in 2010. This embargo followed a collision between Chinese and Japanese boats in the East China Sea, a locus of geopolitical and economic tension between the two countries. Although the World Trade Organization forced China to scrap its restrictions, it still holds a stranglehold over these elements that are so critical to the economic and security interests of the United States and its allies. In this book, Sophia Kalantzakos argues that the 2010 rare earth crisis signaled more than just a trade dispute. Rather, it raises questions about China's use of economic statecraft, and must be regarded as a part of the larger discourse of global power relations. Importantly, she also argues that the failure of political actors in major industrial nations to enact comprehensive and effective policy solutions, or the scientific and business communities to devise sustainable rare earth production outside of China, points to future resource competition. Featuring a new foreword, the paperback edition of China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths examines the impacts of growing worldwide resource competition and the complexities policymakers face as they develop strategies and responses in an increasingly globalized world.

An all-inclusive, exhaustive evaluation of the foreign policy of the European Union.Ten years ago the 2009 Lisbon Treaty put into place the legal and structural foundations for the European Union to play a role as a global actor. In the decade since, the EU itself has undergone intense political and economic stress, from debt crises to the rise of nationalist parties and the strains of Brexit. What effect have these changes had on the EU's foreign policy and its role in the world? This new edition of The Foreign Policy of the European Union offers an up-to-date and comprehensive examination of that question. The globe-spanning contributions to the book include a look at relations between Brussels and its regional neighbors, including Russia; the tensions that have arisen with the United States during the Trump administration; and the burgeoning relationship with China. How the EU is dealing with issues such as migration, terrorism, trade, and security round out the volume.

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.

GENTRIFICATION ON THE BLOCK, A SHOWMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE, ETHICS GONE. THIS IS THE 1980S. Mark starts out in suburban New Jersey, where housing developments and shopping malls provide cover for medical scams, divorces and abortions. He moves on to film-biz-saturated Los Angeles, harboring Afghan freedom fighters and damaged survivors of Hollywood's entertainment-making machine. Back east in rapidly gentrifying New York City, he falls in with art snobs, literary luminaries and real estate operators, all making the most of trickle-down economics. Law school and extreme anxiety are on the horizon, followed by a foray into France and encounters with Eastern religion, an early wave of terrorism and the burgeoning right wing movement that is its corollary. Everyone is looking for anything but what they already have. Mark is no exception.

American security and prosperity now depend on Asia. William H. Overholt offers an iconoclastic analysis of developments in each major Asian country, Asian international relations, and U.S. foreign policy. Drawing on decades of political and business experience, he argues that obsolete Cold War attitudes tie the U.S. increasingly to an otherwise isolated Japan and obscure the reality that a U.S.-Chinese bicondominium now manages most Asian issues. Military priorities risk polarizing the region unnecessarily, weaken the economic relationships that engendered American preeminence, and ironically enhance Chinese influence. As a result, despite its Cold War victory, U.S. influence in Asia is declining. Overholt disputes the argument that democracy promotion will lead to superior development and peace, and forecasts a new era in which Asian geopolitics could take a drastically different shape. Covering Japan, China, Russia, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, Korea, and South-East Asia, Overholt offers invaluable insights for scholars, policymakers, business people, and general readers.

Between January and September 2019, the government of Kazakhstan carried out five humanitarian missions to repatriate more than 600 of its citizens from Syria. Thirty-three were adult males; the rest were women and children. The women had left Kazakhstan to become part of Islamic State - either out of personal conviction, or at the request of their jihadi husbands. Some of the children had gone with them. Others had been born amidst the horror of the war in Syria and Iraq, and the consequences of violent ideology; they knew nothing else of life. Collectively, these missions were known as Operation: Jusan (the jusan shrub, or wormwood, is symbolic for Kazkahs of home on the steppe). Erlan Karin's involvement took him from the planning stages to the extensive de-radicalisation and rehabilitation programmes that followed the airlifts. Here he reveals the full story of a high-stakes mission that required sensitive diplomacy, meticulous timing and great courage. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts from the returnees, Karin also examines their motives in joining the would-be Caliphate, and the role of women and children within it, finally weighing up the risks of returning trained terrorists to their mother country.

As the Indo-Pacific emerges as the world's most strategically consequential region and competition with China intensifies, the United States must adapt its approach if it seeks to preserve its power and sustain regional stability and prosperity. Yet as China grows more powerful and aggressive and the United States appears increasingly unreliable, the Indo-Pacific has become riven with uncertainty. These dynamics threaten to undermine the region's unprecedented peace and prosperity. U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century offers vital perspective on the future of power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, focusing on the critical roles that American allies and partners can play. Abraham M. Denmark argues that these alliances and partnerships represent indispensable strategic assets for the United States. They will be necessary in any effort by Washington to compete with China, promote prosperity, and preserve a liberal order in the Indo-Pacific. Blending academic rigor and practical policy experience, Denmark analyzes the future of major-power competition in the region, with an eye toward American security interests. He details a pragmatic approach for the United States to harness the power of its allies and partners to ensure long-term regional stability and successfully navigate the complexities of the new era.

West Asia continues to churn festered by several hot spots including Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq as Arab Spring 2.0 straddles the region forcing socio-economic reforms. The Middle East Process remains defunct as the Israel-Palestine conflict remains at the brink. The region also continues to suffer from the geopolitical, geo-economic, and geo-religious contestations among major powers like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Egypt, and Iran. Qatar has emerged as new 'Go To' country. Due to perceived nonchalance and withdrawal of the USA, which was its sole security guarantor, the regional majors have begun to look for some modus vivendi among themselves as they enhance their engagements with China and Russia, and to a great extent, even India. Rapprochement between Israel and some Arab countries like the UAE and Bahrain and Sudan and Morocco have paved the way for new power equations as India, Israel, the UAE, and the USA become engaged in a new Economic Quartet. The winds of change are visible as the Russia-Ukraine crisis casts a new shadow on the regional dynamic. The quest for strategic autonomy is distinctly on the horizon. Over a dozen distinguished authors and regional experts have delved deep into the evolving security scenario in this compendium. This is a book that clinically examines critical security issues in West Asia, offers insights and affords solutions and some policy choices for India in a dispassionate manner. A must-read for policy makers, students researchers and even experts.

Aging and Creativity examines the effects of aging on creative functioning, including age-related changes in cognition, personality, and motivation that affect performance or output. The book reviews and summarizes both lab-based and real-world-based studies. Changes in working memory, speed of processing, learning efficiency, and retrieval from long-term memory are all discussed as factors influencing creativity, as are health changes and changes in social roles with later age. The book concludes with practical implications of age effects on creativity for older people in work and everyday life.

Albrechts Text erzahlt von der Entstehung des geschichtsphilosophischen Denkens und damit von der Entstehung des deutschen Idealismus. Mit zwei Thesen erobert die Untersuchung ideengeschichtliches Neuland:
Die geschichtsphilosophischen Ideen von Voltaire und Rousseau bis Hegel und Holderlin sind Reflex der geopolitischen Tatsachen und Meinungen der zweiten Halfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Nicht in groflachigen Globalisierungen, sondern in genauen Einzeluntersuchungen zeigt der Autor: Sie sind Reaktion auf Hunger, Krankheit, ubervolkerung und auf die groraumig angelegten, geopolitischen? Gegenmanahmen wie Agrarrevolution und Landerschacher, europaische Pest- und Pockenabwehr, Kolonial- und Massenkrieg.
Zum anderen: Die Geschichte des deutschen Idealismus nach Kant ist fur Albrecht die Erwiderung auf und der bewute Kampf gegen die zeitgenossische Philosophie in Frankreich, er beschreibt sie als eine Gegenbewegung zum starker tatsachenorientierten Denken der sogenannten Ideologen: Volney, Destutt de Tracy, Dupuis u. a.
Albrecht unterzieht die Mystifikationen der deutschen Geistphilosophie um 1800 einer historischen Revision. Im Ergebnis heit das fur ihn: Der deutsche Idealismus lat sich ableiten aus der politischen, wirtschaftlichen, biologischen, religiosen und technischen Geschichte der zweiten Halfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, aber er ist nicht die zwingende Konsequenz dieser Geschichte. Franzosische Zeitgenossen haben die Probleme klarer analysiert: nicht, geschichtsphilosophisch?, sondern historisch.

Rolando Dromundo presents a political and historical analysis of the state-building processes in Ukraine, Moldova, and the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia from the Soviet fall until 2015, starting with a sketch of the main geopolitical trend that surrounds these polities and its influences on them, and paying special attention to the vicissitudes of the Ukrainian political crisis of 201314 and its immediate consequences in Crimea and the Donbass. This book is a must for scholars with an interest in the Post-Soviet Space and to anyone curious about an international conflict from a realist perspective. It offers an original insight on the understanding of the oligarchs role in the Ukrainian political life and presents a different perspective of the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia. Dromundo writes neither pro-Russian nor pro-Western. He sheds light on the problems from different angles and illustrates how the local inhabitants turned out to become the biggest losers in the game because they have fallen prey to local elites allied with different foreign powers disregarding local identities and needs. Altogether, the book helps to better understand the complexity of local state-building processes in a multiethnic society. Rolando Dromundo presents a political and historical analysis of the state-building processes in Ukraine, Moldova, and the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia from the Soviet fall until 2015, starting with a sketch of the main geopolitical trend that surrounds these polities and its influences on them, and paying special attention to the vicissitudes of the Ukrainian political crisis of 201314 and its immediate consequences in Crimea and the Donbass. This book is a must for scholars with an interest in the Post-Soviet Space and to anyone curious about an international conflict from a realist perspective. It offers an original insight on the understanding of the oligarchs role in the Ukrainian political life and presents a different perspective of the unrecognized Republic of Pridnestrovia. Dromundo writes neither pro-Russian nor pro-Western. He sheds light on the problems from different angles and illustrates how the local inhabitants turned out to become the biggest losers in the game because they have fallen prey to local elites allied with different foreign powers disregarding local identities and needs. Altogether, the book helps to better understand the complexity of local state-building processes in a multiethnic society.

Measuring and Modeling Persons and Situations presents major innovations and contributions on the topic, promoting deeper integration, cross-pollination of ideas across diverse academic disciplines, and the facilitation of the development of practical applications such as matching people to jobs, understanding decision making, and predicting how a group of individuals will interact with one another. The book is organized around two overarching and interrelated themes, with the first focusing on assessing the person and the situation, covering methodological advances and techniques for inferring and measuring characteristics, and showing how they can be instantiated for measurement and predictive purposes. The book's second theme presents theoretical models, conceptualizing how factors of the person and situation can help us understand the psychological dynamics which underlie behavior, the psychological experience of fit or congruence with one's environment, and changes in personality traits over time.