Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2019 'Anyone who wishes to understand why Brexit is so intractable should read this book. I can think of several MPs who ought to.' The Times For the past two decades, you could cross the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic half a dozen times without noticing or, indeed, turning off the road you were travelling. It cuts through fields, winds back-and-forth across roads, and wends from Carlingford Lough to Lough Foyle. It is frictionless - a feat sealed by the Good Friday Agreement. Before that, watchtowers loomed over border communities, military checkpoints dotted the roads, and smugglers slipped between jurisdictions. This is a past that most are happy to have left behind but might it also be the future? The border has been a topic of dispute for over a century, first in Dublin, Belfast and Westminster and, post Brexit referendum, in Brussels. Yet, despite the passions of Nationalists and Unionists in the North, neither found deep wells of support in the countries they identified with politically. British political leaders were often ignorant of the conflict's complexities, rarely visited the border, and privately disliked their erstwhile unionist allies. Southern leaders' anti-partition statements masked relative indifference and unofficial cooperation with British security services. From the 1920 Government of Ireland Act that created the border, the Treaty and its aftermath, through the Civil Rights Movement, Thatcher, the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement up to the Brexit negotiations, Ferriter reveals the political, economic, social and cultural consequences of the border in Ireland. With the fate of the border uncertain, The Border is a timely intervention by a renowned historian into one of the most contentious and misunderstood political issues of our time.

Worldviews of Aspiring Powers provides a serious study of the domestic foreign policy debates in five world powers who have gained more influence as the US's has waned: China, Japan, India, Russia and Iran. Featuring a leading regional scholar for each essay, each essay identifies the most important domestic schools of thought--nationalists, realists, globalists, idealists/exceptionalists--and connects them to the historical and institutional sources that fuel each nation's foreign policy experience. While scholars have applied this approach to US foreign policy, this book is the first to track the competing schools of foreign policy thought within five of the world's most important rising powers. Concise and systematic, Worldviews of Aspiring Powers will serve as both an essential resource for foreign policy scholars trying to understand international power transitions and as a text for courses that focus on the same.

In developing democracies, political parties built around charismatic personalities, coupled with populist campaigns, often ascend to power. This tactic has long been effective in Latin America, and has resulted in parties that rely heavily on personalistic appeals and vote-buying. The predominant view is that ethnic parties are an exception to this rule; they behave differently from traditional populist parties by attracting voters based on the expectation that they will create policies to provide for the groups that they represent. In Candidate Matters: A Study of Ethnic Parties, Campaigns, and Elections in Latin America, Karleen Jones West shows that under certain conditions, niche parties-such as ethnic parties-are not that different from their mainstream counterparts. Through a detailed examination of the Pachakutik party in Ecuador, she shows that the characteristics of individual candidates campaigning in their districts shapes party behavior. Ethnic parties that are initially programmatic can become personalistic and clientelistic because vote-buying is an effective strategy in rural indigenous areas, and because candidates with strong reputations and access to resources can create winning campaigns that buy votes and capitalize on candidates' personal appeal. Why do niche parties in developing democracies struggle to maintain programmatic and meaningful platforms? West argues that when candidates' legislative campaigns are personalistic and clientelistic in their districts, niche parties are unable to maintain unified programmatic support. By combining in-depth fieldwork on legislative campaigns in Ecuador with the statistical analyses of electoral results and public opinion, she demonstrates the importance of candidates and their districts for how niche parties compete, win, and become influential in developing democracies.

The North Caucasus, specifically Chechnya and Ingushetia is a region that has experienced some of the deadliest and most protracted conflicts in Europe. Chechnya is currently a totalitarian enclave within the increasingly authoritarian Russian Federation, while Ingushetia still suffers from lingering political conflicts and chronic problems with the quality of governance. By examining the relationship between state and society, this book considers how state-building has unfolded in a region with highly complex social structures, a history of colonialism, Soviet authoritarianism, and later post-Soviet wars and trauma. Focusing on a systematic analysis of subnational state-building in post-Soviet Chechnya and Ingushetia and the role of teips (clans) in this process, this study responds to the widely accepted academic claim that governance and ethnic consolidation in the North Caucasus are shaped by the politics of teips and the belief that late and uneven modernization, and the survival of tribal structures have been accountable for systematic failures in state-building in the region. The research is based on over 200 interviews which the author carried out in Ingushetia and Chechnya, as well as interviews with Chechen exiled politicians in Europe. The book also features never-before-seen access to the archives of the Chechen Parliament during the period of de facto independence. Through research into the socio-anthropological analysis of the clans and how they function towards political systems, Sokirianskaia shows how the teips lost their traditional organizational structure and roles, becoming incapable of mobilizing for political action. She argues that while teip symbolism has remained politically relevant, and the bonds of kinship are highly important, they do not form the basis of politics and subnational state-building in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Consequently, subnational authoritarianism is not the result of the pre-existing social composition of the society, but a reflection of institutional rules imposed by Moscow.

'This elegantly written, erudite book is essential reading for all of us, whatever our identifications' - Lynne Segal Antisemitism is one of the most controversial topics of our time. The public, academics, journalists, activists and Jewish people themselves are divided over its meaning. Antony Lerman shows that this is a result of a 30-year process of redefinition of the phenomenon, casting Israel, problematically defined as the 'persecuted collective Jew', as one of its main targets. This political project has taken the notion of the 'new antisemitism' and codified it in the flawed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's 'working definition' of antisemitism. This text is the glue holding together an international network comprising the Israeli government, pro-Israel advocacy groups, Zionist organisations, Jewish communal defence bodies and sympathetic governments fighting a war against those who would criticise Israel. The consequences of this redefinition have been alarming, supressing free speech on Palestine/Israel, legitimising Islamophobic right-wing forces, and politicising principled opposition to antisemitism.

In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising -an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis.ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar's bloody quest to preserve his father's inheritance. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Tlass, now a defector from Assad's circle, and Dagher's own firsthand experience as a reporter based in Damascus, ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY takes readers within the palace walls to reveal the family behind the destruction of a country and the chaos of an entire region.Dagher shows how one of the world's most vicious police states came to be and explains how a regional conflict extended globally, engulfing the Middle East and pitting the United States and Russia against one another. Timely, propulsive, and expertly reported, ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY is the definitive account of this global crisis, going far beyond the news story that has dominated headlines for years.

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.

The emergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa on a global stage has upset the dominance of the United States as the world's only superpower. But can they chart a path toward a more just global economy? This collection, which brings together leading political economists from around the world, argues that the BRICS are actually amplifying some of the worst features of international capitalism. This book aims to fill a gap in studies of the BRICS grouping of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). It provides a critical analysis of their economies, societies and geopolitical strategies within the framework of a global capitalism that is increasingly predatory, unequal and ecologically self-destructive -- no more so than in the BRICS countries themselves. In unprecedented detail and with great innovation, the contributors consider theoretical traditions in political economy as applied to the BRICS, including "sub-imperialism," the World System perspective and dynamics of territorial expansion. Only such an approach can interpret the potential for a "brics-from-below" uprising that appears likely to accompany the rise of the BRICS. Contributors: Elmar Altvater, Baruti Amisi, Patrick Bond, Omar Bonilla, Einar Braathen, Pedro Henrique Campos, Ruslan Dzarasov, Virginia Fontes, Ana Garcia, Ho-fung Hung, Richard Kamidza, Karina Kato, Claudio Katz, Mathias Luce, Farai Maguwu, Judith Marshall, Gilmar Mascarenhas, Sam Moyo, Leo Panitch, Bobby Peek, Gonzalo Pozo, Vijay Prashad, Niall Reddy, William Robinson, Susanne Soederberg, Celina Sorboe, Achin Vanaik, Immanuel Wallerstein and Paris Yeros.

This book is the first attempt to comprehensively introduce Japanese geopolitics. Europe's role in disseminating knowledge globally to shape the world according to its standards is an unchallenged premise in world politics. In this story, Japan is regarded as an enthusiastic importer of the knowledge. The book challenges this ground by examining how European geopolitics, the theory of the modern state, traveled to Japan in the first half of the last century, and demonstrates that the same theory can invoke diverged imaginations of the world by examining a range of historical, political, and literary texts. Focusing on the transformation of power, knowledge, and subjectivity in time and space, Watanabe provides a detailed account to reconsider the formation of contemporary world order of the modern territorial states.

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."

Dark Personalities in the Workplace defines dark personalities, their prevalence in the workplace, and how they are best managed. The book brings together research in psychology and business to both profile these employees and impart best practices for businesses to manage them. Chapters explore narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy in a work context. Coverage includes common behaviors such as incivility, negative attitudes, counterproductive behavior and escalating to harassment, bullying, violence, and fraud. Practical advice is given on how to avoid hiring dark personalities, avoid promoting dark personalities, and how to perform investigations and interventions with dark personalities. With a background in forensic psychology and industrial/organizational psychology, Cynthia Mathieu provides a researched understanding to these personalities, case studies to better understand them, and practical tools and applied solutions for dealing with them.

In our globalized world, borders are back with a vengeance. New data shows a massive increase of walls and barriers between countries after 2001. However, at the same time, the flow of people and the growth of trade have continued at impressive rates, and arguments for more open borders remain relevant. In The Border, Martin Schain compares how and why border policy has become increasingly important, politicized, and divisive in both Europe and the United States. Drawing from an intensive analysis of documents and interviews, he argues that border control is a growing international movement. In Europe, the European Union is under scrutiny, and many countries seek to block the entry of asylum-seekers from wars in the Near East. In the US, Donald Trump pledged to build a wall along the Mexico border, restricted the entry of Syrian asylum-seekers, and more generally tried to ban Muslim immigration. Moreover, on both sides of the Atlantic, trade barriers appear in the political agendas of major parties. Schain delves into these interlinked phenomena, showing that migration, identity, and trade have been packaged and transformed into hotly contested issues of border governance and control.

On October 1, 2009, the People's Republic of China (PRC) celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding. And what an eventful and tumultuous six decades it had been. During that time, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China was transformed from one of the world's poorest countries into the world's fastest growing major economy, and from a weak state barely able to govern or protect its own territory to a rising power that is challenging the United States for global influence. Over those same years, the PRC also experienced the most deadly famine in human history, caused largely by the actions and inactions of its political leaders. Not long after, there was a collapse of government authority that pushed the country to the brink of (and in some places actually into) civil war and anarchy. Today, China is, for the most part, peaceful, prospering, and proud. This is the China that was on display for the world to see during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The CCP maintains a firm grip on power through a combination of popular support largely based on its recent record of promoting rapid economic growth and harsh repression of political opposition. Yet, the party and country face serious challenges on many fronts, including a slowing economy, environmental desecration, pervasive corruption, extreme inequalities, and a rising tide of social protest. The third edition of Politics in China has been extensively revised, thoroughly updated, and includes a new chapter on the internet and Politics in China. It is an authoritative introduction to how the world's most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. Written by leading China scholars, the book's chapters offers accessible overviews of major periods in China's modern political history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, key topics in contemporary Chinese politics, and developments in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The Irish Times bestseller 'A gripping tale of savagery and courage' Noam Chomsky 'Fascinating and captivating' Irish Times 'A beautiful book... Full of pain and longing but also joy, adventure, and excitement' Janine di Giovanni 'A superb account of the life and work of the best reporter I have ever known' Patrick Cockburn When Lara Marlowe met Robert Fisk in 1983 in Damascus, he was already a famous war correspondent. She was a young American reporter who would become a renowned journalist in her own right. For the next twenty years, they were lovers, husband and wife and friends, occasionally angry and estranged from one another, but ultimately reconciled. They learned from each other and from the people in the ruined world they reported from: Lebanon, torn apart by a vicious civil war as well as Israeli and Syrian occupations; Iran, where they were the only journalists to interview the Middle East's chief hostage-taker and dispatcher of suicide bombers; the Islamist revolt that claimed up to 200,000 lives in Algeria; the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and two US-led wars on Iraq. This is at once a portrait of a remarkable man, the story of a Middle East broken by its own divisions and outside powers, and a moving account of a relationship in dark times.

This book cuts through the misunderstandings about Russia's geopolitical challenge to the West, presenting this not as 'hybrid war' but 'political war.' Russia seeks to antagonise: its diplomats castigate Western 'Russophobia' and cultivate populist sentiment abroad, while its media sells Russia as a peaceable neighbour and a bastion of traditional social values. Its spies snoop, and even kill, and its hackers and trolls mount a 24/7 onslaught on Western systems and discourses. This is generally characterised as 'hybrid war,' but this is a misunderstanding of Russian strategy. Drawing extensively not just on their writings but also decades of interactions with Russian military, security and government officials, this study demonstrates that the Kremlin has updated traditional forms of non-military 'political war' for the modern world. Aware that the West, if united, is vastly richer and stronger, Putin is seeking to divide, and distract, in the hope it will either accept his claim to Russia's great-power status - or at least be unable to prevent him. In the process, Russia may be foreshadowing how the very nature of war is changing: political war may be the future. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, war studies, Russian politics and security studies.

A stunning work of popular history-the story of how a crop transformed the history of slavery Americans consume over 1.5 billion pounds of peanut products every year. But few of us know the peanut's tumultuous history, or its intimate connection to slavery and freedom. Lyrical and powerful, Slaves for Peanuts deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that transformed the lives of millions. Author Jori Lewis reveals how demand for peanut oil in Europe ensured that slavery in Africa would persist well into the twentieth century, long after the European powers had officially banned it in the territories they controlled. Delving deep into West African and European archives, Lewis recreates a world on the coast of Africa that is breathtakingly real and unlike anything modern readers have experienced. Slaves for Peanuts is told through the eyes of a set of richly detailed characters-from an African-born French missionary harboring runaway slaves, to the leader of a Wolof state navigating the politics of French imperialism-who challenge our most basic assumptions of the motives and people who supported human bondage. At a time when Americans are grappling with the enduring consequences of slavery, here is a new and revealing chapter in its global history.

Trump and Mussolini: Images, Fake News, and Mass Media, Weapons in the Hands of Two Populists compares two historic men of power and influence, Donald Trump and Benito Mussolini, to analyze the commonality of practices and mannerisms between the two. From rhetoric to body language , to their control over oral and written communication and analogous power strategies, they both possess an unusual talent for new technologies which they utilize to their advantage in unique moments in history. Mussolini lived at the beginning of mass society, Trump at the height of social media, both controversial leaders finding means to utilize these periods of time and the tools surrounding them to further their own agendas and influence society, culture, and authority. The authors examine a plethora of topics and themes such as outward personalities and consuming charisma, means and tools of communication and propaganda, and treatment of women, just to name a few, in order to define the relationship and similarities between these two controversial figures.

At a time of fear and anxiety, leading writers offer reassurance by looking at twenty ways the response to the coronavirus pandemic could make the world a better place. The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is a once-in-a-century event, a tragedy and a source of deep anxiety. But in darkness there is light; in tackling the most impossible challenges, human ingenuity forges new and positive paths forward. In his introduction, Professor Graham Davey argues that context and perspective are the best ways to alleviate the personal anxiety created by the pandemic and lockdown - context offered by the pieces in this collection. From leading science, society and culture writers and editors comes an easy-to-read look at twenty ways the human response to coronavirus could help to make the world a better place. Twenty reasons for each of us to find light in the darkness. Contributors include: Tom Whipple, science editor of The Times Lucy Mangan, columnist and author Sarah Knapton, science editor of the Telegraph Lindsay Dodgson, senior staff writer at Business Insider Alex Hern, technology editor of the Guardian

This edited collection surveys how non-Western states have responded to the threats of domestic and international terrorism in ways consistent with and reflective of their broad historical, political, cultural and religious traditions. It presents a series of eighteen case studies of counterterrorism theory and practice in the non-Western world, including countries such as China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Brazil. These case studies, written by country experts and drawing on original language sources, demonstrate the diversity of counter-terrorism theory and practice and illustrate how the world 'sees' and responds to terrorism is different from the way that the United States, the United Kingdom and many European governments do. This volume - the first ever comprehensive account of counter-terrorism in the non-Western world - will be of interest to students, scholars, students and policymakers responsible for developing counter-terrorism policy. -- .

As the United States slowly disengages from the Middle East and Europe faces internal challenges, a new actor is quietly exerting greater influence across North Africa: China. Beijing's growing footprint in North Africa encompasses, but is not limited to, trade, infrastructure development, ports, shipping, financial cooperation, tourism and manufacturing. It is continuing to expand its co-operation with North African countries, not only in the economic and cultural spheres, but also those of diplomacy and defence. This engagement with North Africa relates to the key aim of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which wants to connect Asia, Africa and Europe and sees potential in North Africa's strategic geographic location. This book is the first to analyse China's role in North Africa. It comprises of five leading country experts - Anouar Boukhars, Yahia Zoubir, Sarah Yerkes, Tareki Magresi and Nael Shama - who examine the various socio-economic, political and security aspects of China's relationship with Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. The book explores how China is displaying a development model that seeks to combine authoritarianism with economic growth, a model and that has an eager audience among regimes across the MENA region. It reveals how the China-North Africa relationship fits within the broader dynamics of increasing China-US rivalry. In doing so, contributors explain why China's growing role in North Africa is likely to have far-reaching economic and geopolitical consequences for both countries in the region and around the world.

Dueck explores the past, present, and future of Republican foreign policy nationalism. The rise of a populist conservative nationalism in the United States has triggered unease at home and abroad. Riding the populist wave, Donald Trump achieved the presidency advocating a hardline nationalist approach. Yet critics frequently misunderstand the Trump administration's foreign policy, along with American nationalism. In Age of Iron, leading authority on Republican foreign policy Colin Dueck demonstrates that conservative nationalism is the oldest democratic tradition in US foreign relations. Designed to preserve self-government, conservative nationalism can be compatible with engagement overseas. But 21st century diplomatic, economic, and military frustrations led to the resurgence of a version that emphasizes US material interests. No longer should the US allow its allies to free-ride, and nor should it surrender its sovereignty to global governance institutions. Because this return is based upon forces larger than Trump, it is unlikely to disappear when he leaves office. Age of Iron describes the shifting coalitions over the past century among foreign policy factions within the Republican Party, and shows how Trump upended them starting in 2015-16. Dueck offers a balanced summary and assessment of President Trump's foreign policy approach, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. He also describes the current interaction of conservative public opinion and presidential foreign policy leadership in the broader context of political populism. Finally, he makes the case for a forward-leaning realism, based upon the understanding that the US is entering a protracted period of geopolitical competition with other major powers. The result is a book that captures the past, present, and, possibly, future of conservative foreign policy nationalism in the US.