In July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) set out to stabilise and secure Rwanda, a country decimated by genocide. This mandate was later extended to include the herculean task of promoting unity and reconciliation to a population torn apart by violence. More than two decades later, these goals appear to have been achieved. Beneath the veneer of reconciliation lies myriad programmes and legislation that do more than seek to unite the population - they keep the RPF in power. In Reconciling Rwanda: Unity, Nationality and State Control, Jennifer Melvin analyses the highly controversial RPF and its vision of reconciliation to determine who truly benefits from the construction of the new post-genocide Rwanda.

We no longer inhabit a world governed by international coordination, a unified NATO bloc, or an American hegemon. Traditionally, the decline of one empire leads to a restoration in the balance of power, via a struggle among rival systems of order. Yet this dynamic is surprisingly absent today; instead, the superpowers have all, at times, sought to promote what Jason Pack terms the 'Enduring Disorder'. He contends that Libya's ongoing conflict--more so than the civil wars in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela or Ukraine--constitutes the ideal microcosm in which to identify the salient features of this new era of geopolitics. The country's post-Qadhafi trajectory has been moulded by the stark absence of coherent international diplomacy; while Libya's incremental implosion has precipitated cross-border contagion, further corroding global institutions and international partnership. Pack draws on over two decades of research in and on Libya and Syria to highlight the Kafkaesque aspects of today's global affairs. He shows how even the threats posed by the Arab Spring, and the Benghazi assassination of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, couldn't occasion a unified Western response. Rather, they have further undercut global collaboration, demonstrating the self-reinforcing nature of the progressively collapsing world order.

Economic sanctions have been an increasingly conspicuous feature of world politics since the end of World War 1, owing largely to the decreasing legitimacy of the use of force and the world's growing economic interdependence. Nevertheless, there still exists scepticism regarding their efficacy.;The study is a pioneering effort and investigates the role of economic sanctions in the international community today and their effectiveness and limitations, analyzing more than 30 of the most significant cases since 1918, but focusing primarily on the 1980-81 Iranian Hostages sanctions.

Available in paperback for the first time, this work of original scholarship is the first to trace in full detail how the UK’s system for defining parliamentary constituencies has evolved since the Great Reform Act of 1832 and how the eight redistrictings since then were undertaken.

Particular attention is paid to the five redistrictings that have been undertaken by the independent Boundary Commissions established in 1944, with a detailed study of all aspects of their work on the most recent review of all constituencies.

The book is both a standard reference work on redistribution in the UK and provides the only detailed insight into how that task is currently undertaken, based on a study of the relevant documents and interviews with over a hundred of those most closely involved. The book will be essential for all those interested in the British constitution, and administrators concerned with making the constitution successful, as well as politicians.

A gripping history of China's deteriorating relationship with Hong Kong, and its implications for the rest of the world. For the 150 years that Hong Kong was a British colony, people, money and technology flowed freely, while Hong Kong residents enjoyed freedoms that simply did not exist in mainland China. When the territory was handed over to China in 1997, the Communist Party promised that Hong Kong would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. Now, at the halfway mark, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted and activists have been jailed en masse following the decree of a sweeping national security law by Beijing. As China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower's control. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation first-hand and has unrivalled access to the full range of the city's society, from student protestors to billionaire businessmen and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.

an excellent collection that should be read by all scholars of Southeast Asia, and that should provoke more thought and research on the people whose lives and practicescontinue to connect Southeast Asian nation-states. . JRAI The literature on borders and borderlands, the state, globalization and ethnic minorities, is now huge, but the editors of this book do a good job of summarizing most of it in their introduction...This book will swiftly become a key reading in university courses dealing with borderlands and Southeast Asia. . Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde each of the studies is well worth making available and the set of them offers a useful addition to the literature on borders and migration. . Anthropos In a completely new approach to borders and border crossing, this volume suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia. Choosing an actor approach, the individual chapters in this volume capture the narratives of minorities, migrants and refugees who inhabit and cross borders as part of their everyday life. They show that people are not only constrained by borders; the crossing of borders also opens up new options of agency. Making active use of these, border-crossing actors construct their own live projects on the border in multiple ways against the original intention of the nation-state. Based on their intimate knowledge of the interaction of communities, anthropologists from Europe, the USA, Japan and Southeast Asia provide a vivid picture of the effects of state policies at the borders on these communities. Alexander Horstmann teaches Social Anthropology of Southeast Asia at the University of Munster and is a Fellow of the Study Group Islamic Culture Modern Society at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut), Essen. Among his major publications include Class Culture and Space: The Construction and Shaping of Communal Space in South Thailand, Transaction, 2002. Reed L. Wadley is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri, USA. His research includes borderlands, warfare, colonialism, natural resource management and historical ecology, involving Iban communities of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Among his publications are Punitive expeditions and divine revenge: Oral and colonial histories of rebellion and pacification in western Borneo, 1886-1902, Ethnohistory (2004)."

Alcohol use is complex and multifaceted. Our understanding must be also. Alcohol use, both problematic and not, can be understood at many levels - from basic biological systems through to global public health interventions. To provide the multi-level perspective needed to address this complexity, the Handbook of Alcohol Use draws together an eclectic set of authors, including both researchers and practitioners, to examine the causes, processes and effects of alcohol consumption. Specifically, this book approaches the topic from biological, individual cognition, small group/systems, and domestic/global population perspectives. Each examines alcohol use differently and each offers its own ways to combat problematic behavior. While these alternative viewpoints are sometimes construed as incompatible or antagonistic, the current volume also explores how they can be complimentary. In summary, the Handbook of Alcohol Use brings together an international group of experts to explore how alcohol use can be understood from various perspectives and how these conceptualizations relate. In doing so, it allows us to understand alcohol consumption, and our responses to it, more from an account which spans 'from synapse to society'.

Having destabilized dominant assumptions about the nature of religion, there is now a need to develop new ways of thinking about this ever-present phenomenon in global politics. This book outlines a new approach to understanding religion and its relationship with politics in the West and globally for International Relations.

This collection discusses China's contemporary national and international identity as evidenced in its geopolitical impact on the countries in its direct periphery and its functioning in organizations of global governance. This contemporary identity is assessed against the background of the country's Confucian and nationalist history.

"The New Energy Crisis" comes from the recent intrusion of climate change issues into energy economics and geopolitics. Global warming suddenly reveals that the current evolution of the world energy consumption is on an unsustainable path. This book explores economic and geopolitical tensions and reinforces ways to overcome the crisis.

At the turn of the millennium the state of Europe is fluid and contested, yet how this affects the everyday lives of European peoples and the ways they experience the social world they live in remains largely unexplored. Drawing upon ethnographic information from diverse European settings, this volume points to the contradictions that the project of a "Europe without boundaries" involves. In illustrating how the removal of political boundaries can create other boundaries, the articles in this volume provide alternatives to recent theorising on complexity, which takes little account of human agency.

Jaro Stacul was awarded his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. He has been a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Wales, Swansea, and currently lectures at Roehampton University, London. Berghahn Books also published his The Bounded Field: Localism and Local Identity in an Italian Alpine Valley (2003).

Christina Moutsou received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and has been working on Greek-Turkish relations, cosmopolitanism and the European Union. She is Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and a fully qualified psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Currently she is working on the links between anthropology and psychotherapy.

Helen Kopnina was awarded her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Currently she lectures at the Vrije Universiteit and the Fashion Institute, Hoogeschool, both in Amsterdam. Her postdoctoral research examines small businesses in Singapore and Malaysia. Her publications include the book East to West Migration (Ashgate 2005).

This text analyzes the political and material conditions driving contemporary border control policies and discusses the processes that mediate popular and official understandings of border-related fatalities.

In a completely new approach to borders and border crossing, this volume suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia. Choosing an actor approach, the individual chapters in this volume capture the narratives of minorities, migrants and refugees who inhabit and cross borders as part of their everyday life. They show that people are not only constrained by borders; the crossing of borders also opens up new options of agency. Making active use of these, border-crossing actors construct their own live projects on the border in multiple ways against the original intention of the nation-state. Based on their intimate knowledge of the interaction of communities, anthropologists from Europe, the USA, Japan and Southeast Asia provide a vivid picture of the effects of state policies at the borders on these communities.

This book offers a critical reassessment of the "Asian values" debate, which dominated the human rights discourse in the late 1990s, and a reappraisal of the human rights situation in Asia since then. In this book Asian and non-Asian scholars contextualize the "Asian values" debate and examine in what ways the issues raised then continue to trouble Asian societies. Human rights are seen both in the context of political developments in individual Asian countries as well as in relation to global issues such as the Global War on Terror. The book challenges the reader to critically examine human rights rhetoric and practice both in Asia and globally.

Blending theory and case studies, this volume explores a vitally important and topical aspect of developmentalism, which remains a focal point for scholarly and policy debates around democracy and social development in the global political economy. Includes case studies from China, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Uganda, South Korea, Ireland, Australia.

A unique analysis that assesses how we can determine which country will be the next world leader. Will China surpass the United States as the world's leader? In American Global Pre-eminence, William R. Thompson argues that the answer depends on leads in technological innovation, energy, and global reach. These are the forces that influence the hierarchy of global power-a system which began emerging a thousand years ago and started becoming more evident after the 1490s, especially after Dutch activities in the seventeenth century and British operations in the nineteenth century. The US followed in this fashion after 1945. Yet leads do not last forever. Ironically, as it becomes clearer how technological innovation, military force, and energy power interact, the processes under scrutiny may themselves be fundamentally transforming. Thus, Thompson contends, the real policy question is not whether the US is ahead or behind China but, rather, whether it will remain possible for a single state to lead the global system. As technological innovation, energy consumption, and global reach capability grow less concentrated, the prospects for systemic leadership shrink-even as global problems become more complex and acute. With a sweeping analysis of global power, Thompson provides a foundation for understanding the realities and possibilities of lead states past, present, and future.

Adopting a people-centred perspective to globalization, the authors explore complex, counterintuitive and even unintended forms and consequences of bottom-up politics, going beyond simplistic understandings of ordinary people as either victims or beneficiaries of globalization.

What makes large, multi-ethnic states hang together? At a time when ethnic and religious conflict has gained global prominence, the territorial organization of states is a critical area of study.

Exploring how multi-ethnic and geographically dispersed states grapple with questions of territorial administration and change, this book argues that territorial change is a result of ongoing negotiations between states and societies where mutual and overlapping interests can often emerge. It focuses on the changing dynamics of central-local relations in Indonesia. Since the fall of Suharto s New Order government, new provinces have been sprouting up throughout the Indonesian archipelago. After decades of stability, this sudden change in Indonesia s territorial structure is puzzling. The author analyses this "provincial proliferation," which is driven by multilevel alliances across different territorial administrative levels, or territorial coalitions. He demonstrates that national level institutional changes including decentralization and democratization explain the timing of the phenomenon. Variations also occur based on historical, cultural, and political contexts at the regional level. The concept of territorial coalitions challenges the dichotomy between centre and periphery that is common in other studies of central-local relations.

This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of comparative politics, political geography, history and Asian and Southeast Asian politics.

Muhammad bin Salman Al-Saud and Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the respective princely strongmen of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have torn up the old rules. They have spurred game-changing economic master plans, presided over vast anti-corruption crackdowns, tackled entrenched religious forces, and overseen the mass arrest of critics. In parallel, they also appear to have replaced the old 'sheikhly' consensus systems of their predecessors with something more autocratic, more personalistic, and perhaps even analytically distinct. These are the two wealthiest and most populous Gulf monarchies, and increasingly important global powers--Saudi Arabia is a G20 member, and the UAE will be the host of the World Expo in 2021-2022. Such sweeping changes to their statecraft and authority structures could well end up having a direct impact, for better or worse, on policies, economies and individual lives all around the world. Christopher M. Davidson tests the hypothesis that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now effectively contemporary or even 'advanced' sultanates, and situates these influential states within an international model of autocratic authoritarianism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, including new interviews and surveys, 'From Sheikhs to Sultanism' puts forward an original, empirically grounded interpretation of the rise of both MBS and MBZ.

Since the late 1980s, critical geopolitics has gone from being a radical critical perspective on the disciplines of political geography and international relations theory to becoming a recognised area of research in its own right. Influenced by poststructuralist concerns with the politics of representation, critical geopolitics considers the ways in which the use of particular discourses shape political practices. Initially critical geopolitics analysed the practical geopolitical language of the elites and intellectuals of statecraft. Subsequent iterations have considered the role that popular representations of the international political world play. As critical geopolitics has become a more established part of political geography it has attracted ever more critique: from feminists for its apparent blindness to the embodied effects of geopolitical praxis and from those who have been uncomfortable about its textual focus, while others have challenged critical geopolitics to address alternative, resistant forms of geopolitical practice. Again, critical geopolitics has been reworked to incorporate these challenges and the latest iterations have encompassed normative agendas, non-representational theory, emotional geographies and affect. It is against the vibrant backdrop of this intellectual development of critical geopolitics as a subdiscipline that this Companion is set. Bringing together leading researchers associated with the different forms of critical geopolitics, this volume produces an overview of its achievements, limitations, and areas of new and potential future development. The Companion is designed to serve as a key resource for an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners interested in the spatiality of politics.

Contemporary international migration makes border controls, bounded citizenship, and sovereign jurisdictions appear increasingly outdated. These policy tools are poor responses to a world characterized by cross-border mobility, transnational interconnections and global diaspora. Are there viable alternatives to this system of territorial and exclusive states?This book takes a historical trajectory, exploring governments' use of different territorial strategies to manage migration at specific moments during the evolution of the international system, from centralization in Renaissance Italy and expansion under the British Empire to the integration of the European Union. Vigneswaran shows how under each of these regimes, political thinkers and rulers draw upon a 'mental map' - a specific way of imagining political space - to devise their systems of jurisdiction, belonging and immigration control. Using evidence of territorial variation and reform, this book looks to the future of migration regimes beyond the territorially exclusive state.

This book examines how national public discourses in Western Europe have transnationalized over the past two decades and what this means for the legitimacy of the European Union.The emergence of a European public sphere is a hot topic in academic as well as political debates across Europe. This book provides the only longitudinal study of the transnationalization and Europeanization of public spheres to date (covering the period 1982-2005). It moves the research frontier forward in a number of ways: by thoroughly inspecting the normative expectations directed at the news media (which are often left implicit in other studies), by employing comprehensive multidimensional measures of the transnationalization of public discourses, by combining quantitative and qualitative methods of media content analysis, and by explaining patterns and trends of Europeanization rather than only describing them.

Kurdistan exists as a cultural and political concept on many levels of discourse. Despite Kurdistan's divisions, lack of definition and the absence of a unified struggle for a Kurdish state, the concept survives the reality as a powerful mixture of myths, reality and ambition. This thesis analyses geographical and historical factors, which have shaped Kurdish conceptions of their identity. Historically, Kurdistan existed in the heart of an ethnically and geographically complex region, a marginal buffer zone between rival regional and colonial powers. Kurdistan's location was the key to its political and cultural developments. Many resultant features were to militate against the formation of a Kurdish state.