This volume examines international statebuilding in terms of language and meanings, rather than focusing narrowly on current policy practices. After two decades of evolution towards more 'integrated,' 'multi-faceted' or, simply stated, more intrusive statebuilding and peacebuilding operations, a critical literature has slowly emerged on the economic, social and political impacts of these interventions. Scholars have started to analyse the 'unintended consequences' of peacebuilding missions, analysing all aspects of interventions. Central to the book is the understanding that language is both the most important tool for building anything of social significance, and the primary repository of meanings in any social setting. Hence, this volume exemplifies how the multiple realities of state, state fragility and statebuilding are being conceptualised in mainstream literature, by highlighting the repercussions this conceptualisation has on 'good practices' for statebuilding. Drawing together leading scholars in the field, this project provides a meeting point between constructivism in international relations and the critical perspective on liberal peacebuilding, shedding new light on the commonly accepted meanings and concepts underlying the international (or world) order, as well as the semantics of contemporary statebuilding practices. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding and intervention, war and conflict studies, security studies and international relations.

"Babel is everywhere! Migrant readings from Africa, Europe and Asia" sets out to explore the intersection between religion, identity and migration. It does so by telling entangled histories between diaspora/s and homeland and by analysing biblical in-roads to issues and challenges of migration. It also explores hyphenated identities and takes a close look at the role of migrant religion specifically regarding issues of mission, of identity formation and of ecclesial and societal formation. This book challenges static notions of diaspora, stable identities and Western-centred notions of Christianity and offers kaleidoscopic insights from Pentecostal, migrant and intercultural perspectives.

This edited volume is a compilation of the analyses written by East Asian Institute experts on Hong Kong since the handover. It covers most, if not all the important events that have taken place in Hong Kong since 1997, including its economic integration and relations with China, its governance conundrums, the Hong Kong identity and nation-building, the implementation of the minimum wage, and the elections from 2011-2012. The book's panoramic view of Hong Kong makes it a useful resource for readers who seek a broad understanding of the city and how it has evolved after its return to China. It also offers some glimpses into the direction Hong Kong is heading in its socio-economic relations with China at both the state and society levels, as well as its domestic political developments and the prospects for democratization.

The emergence of Thatcherism around 1980, which ushered in a period of neo-liberalism in British politics that still resonates today, led musicians, like other artists, to respond to their context of production. This book uses the early work of one of these musicians, Elvis Costello, to explore the relationship between popular music and politics in one historical period. It is not a biography but an exploration of the interaction between a creative musician's works and their context of constraint and opportunity. Pilgrim and Ormrod unpack the political meaning of Thatcherism and deal with matters arising in that political context about Costello's life but which had resonance for many others at the time (and still do). These topics include the politics of race, class, gender and ageing, emphasising the recurring theme of nostalgia in modern and post-modern life. Throughout the book examples are provided of Costello's songs and how they work musically to illustrate or stimulate the contextual discussion. The book will be of significant interest to musicologists, sociologists and social psychologists.

Gazing in Useless Wonder focuses on utopias as self-referential texts that literally have to constitute themselves as imaginary or intentional entities before they can work as vehicles for socio-political ideas. Foregrounding the construction of utopian fictions defines both the perspective and the differentiation of the analytically significant elements, so that the traditionally dominant topics such as the nature and origins of the ideologies behind the construction of the ideal model are taken into account only insofar as they contribute to the aesthetic effect of the utopian construct as a whole. The organising principle of the early modern utopia involves two different modes of presentation: the narrative frame and the ekphrastic description of the ideal state, each possessing an aesthetic function realised according to different principles, with the ideal image constructed in accordance with the dominant aesthetic norms of the period pertaining to the visual arts, such as harmony, symmetry, alleged perfection, and timelessness. Despite variations, especially in the thematic-ideological domain, the dominant genre pattern that emerged as a result of the simplification of the complex semantics of Thomas More's Utopia in the early modern period is taken here as forming a single synchrony in the history of utopian fiction-making.

Julius Evola's writing covered a vast range of subjects, from a distinctive and categorical ideological outlook and has been extremely influential on a significant number of extreme right thinkers, activists and organisations. This book is the first full length study in English to present his political thought to a wider audience, beyond that of his followers and sympathisers, and to bring into the open the study of a neglected strand of contemporary Western thought, that of traditionalism. Evola deserves more attention because he is an influential writer. His following comes from an important if largely ignored political movement: activists and commentators whose political positions are, like his, avowedly traditionalist, authoritarian, anti-modern, anti-democratic and anti-liberal. With honourable exceptions, contemporary academic study tends to treat these groups as a minority within a minority, a sub-species of Fascism, from whom they are held to derive their ideas and their support. This work seeks to bring out more clearly the complexity of Evola's post-war strategy, so as to explain how he can be adopted both by the neo-fascist groups committed to violence, and by groups such as the European New Right whose approach is more aimed at influence from within liberal democracies. Furlong also recognises the relevance of Evola's ideas to anti-globalisation arguments, including a re-examination of his arguments for detachment and spontaneism (apolitia).

'One of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our once-familiar world. . . Essential reading for these turbulent times.' Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement Dougald Hine, author and social thinker, has spent most of his life talking to people about climate change. And then one afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he found he had nothing left to say. Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological destruction want to stop talking about climate change now? At Work in the Ruins explores that question. 'Climate change asks us questions that climate science cannot answer,' Hine says. Questions like, how did we end up in this mess? Is it just a piece of bad luck with the atmospheric chemistry-or is it the result of a way of approaching the world that would always have brought us to such a pass? How we answer such questions has consequences. According to Hine, our answers shape our understanding and our thinking about what kind of problem we think we're dealing with and, therefore, what kind of responses we go looking for. "But when science is turned into an object of belief and a source of overriding authority," Hine continues, "it becomes hard even to talk about the questions that it cannot answer." In eloquent, deeply researched prose, Hine demonstrates how our over-reliance on the single lens of science has blinded us to the nature of the crises around and ahead of us, leading to 'solutions' that can only make things worse. At Work in the Ruins is his reckoning with the strange years we have been living through and our long history of asking too much of science. It's also about how we find our bearings and what kind of tasks are worth giving our lives to, given all we know or have good grounds to fear about the trouble the world is in. For anyone who has found themselves needing to make sense of the COVID time and how we talk about it, At Work in the Ruins offers guidance by standing firmly forward and facing the depth of the trouble we are in. Hine, ultimately, helps us find the work that is worth doing, even in the ruins. 'A book of rare originality and depth-profound, far-reaching, mind-altering stuff.' Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings

Since the late 1920s, social democracy has been preeminent in the politics of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, through dominant parties and ideological hegemony of the center-left. The Nordic Model of Social Democracy relates the concept of the Nordic model to the guiding role of social democratic ideology in developing and sustaining a particular way of society, extending from the mixed economy to social and gender equality and the universal welfare state. Moving beyond the historical account, the book also addresses a set of current and future challenges for social democrats, such as welfare state sustainability, the multicultural society, globalization and the decline of mass politics. The analysis breaks new ground by relating the recent international literature on social democracy to the distinct Scandinavian experience. It speaks out against the 'decline thesis' of the left, emphasizing instead the continuity and vitality of social democracy in the Nordic region

With this timely commitment, Jacques Bidet unites the theories of arguably the world's two greatest emancipatory political thinkers. In this far-reaching and decisive text, Bidet examines Marxian and Foucauldian criticisms of capitalist modernity. For Marx, the intersection between capital and the market is crucial, while for Foucault, the organizational aspects of capital are what really matter. According to Marx, the ruling class is identified with property; with Foucault, it is the managers who hold power and knowledge that rule. Bidet identifies these two sides of capitalist modernity as 'market' and 'organization', showing that each leads to specific forms of social conflict; against exploitation and austerity, over wages and pensions on the one hand, and against forms of 'medical' and work-based discipline, control of bodies and prisons on the other. Bidet's impetus and clarity however serve a greater purpose: uniting two souls of critical social theory, in order to overcome what has become an age-long separation between the 'old left' and the 'new social movements'.

Throughout the world, liberal-democracies are grappling with increasing claims made in the name of minority national, socio-cultural and ethno-cultural identities that seek greater recognition in the institutions of the nation-state. This work inserts itself into debates centred on diversity through a normative and empirical analytical assessment of the political sociology of multinational democracies. The main thread of the arguments put forward is that federalism, in both its institutional manifestations and its sociological properties, constitutes a promising avenue for the management of cohabitating political communities and for the affirmation of collective identities within states that are constituted by two or more nations. Author Alain-G Gagnon develops his argument by contending that the federal principle allows for the exercise of advanced democratic practices within nation-states, permitting internal nations to openly affirm the bases of adherence to a common political project. At the same time, he argues that federalism nourishes the development of distinct collective traditions that serve to benefit all parties to the association. It is concluded that only in such a scenario will the elusive pursuit of an authentic and shared loyalty underpin multination states and ensure their stability, in contrast to the instrumental sentiments of belonging engendered by procedural territorial federal models. Focusing primarily on the Canadian case, this book also draws inspiration from other federal states (Belgium, the United States), as well as federalizing states (Spain, the United Kingdom). It will be of keen interest to students and scholars of Politics, European Studies, along with Nationalism and Federalism Studies.

Islam is a burning topic in modern scholarship and contemporary world affairs. It is a subject poorly understood by Western observers, and in this book Professor Montgomery Watt takes a significant step towards its demystification. Montgomery Watt examines the crucial questions of traditional world-view and self-image which dominate the thinking of Muslims today. This traditional self-image causes them to perceive world events in a different perspective from Westerners - a fact not always appreciated by the foreign ministries of Western powers. Professor Watt presents a brilliant and critical analysis of the traditional Islamic self-image, showing how it distorts Western modernism and restricts Muslims to a peripheral role in world affairs. In a scholarly and incisive way, he traces this harmful image to its origins in the medieval period and then to the traumatic exposure of Muslims to the West in modern times. He argues that Muslim culture is suffering from a dangerous introspection, and in his closing chapters presents a constructive criticism of contemporary Islam, aimed at contributing to a truer, more realistic Islamic self-image for today. First published in 1988.

From Western Europe to Asia, from the Middle East to the Horn of Africa, societies are finding themselves under growing assault from radical Islamist forces. In some countries, such as Spain and France, the challenge posed by radical Islam is still limited in scope and embryonic in nature. But in others, including Somalia and Pakistan, it poses a mortal danger to the future of the existing state. The World Almanac of Islamism is the first comprehensive reference work to detail the global reach of Islamism across six continents. Each country study, written by leading subject-matter experts, examines the full scope of the Islamist phenomenon, from the activities of radical Islamist groups to the role of Islamist actors and ideas in society to the response-or complicity-of the local government. An additional series of "movement" studies explores the global reach, ideology, and capabilities of the world's most powerful transnational Islamist movements. Finally, Almanac includes regional summaries and a global overview designed to provide context and strategic insights into current and emerging trends relating to Islamism the world over. Features of the new edition include: - Three new country studies (Nigeria, Brazil, Tanzania) - Two new movement studies (the Gulen movement and Boko Haram) - Updates to all original chapters - Consolidation of trends/analyses into one "Global Overview"

The demise of the modern self-centred subject does not engender a waning but a politicisation of affect: The site of passion is now no longer the individual's interiority but the contact zone of intersubjective encounters. The public and political status of the emotions thus becomes apparent, making visible how affects are embedded in and shaped by discursive regimes. Neither spontaneous nor overdetermined, passion is therefore not the "other" of reason but a deeply social energy that fuels political, cultural and everyday practices. The Politics of Passion combines theoretical reframings of affect and emotion in global modernity with analyses of concrete instances of politics of passion from above or from below. By including debates and struggles in Western, Asian and African contexts, the volume attends to the actual plurality of affective rationalities and politics beyond a Eurocentric framework.

The book tackles significant problems that each historian of law faces in the light of present decline of philosophical, ethical and ideological canons in the overall context of western civilization. The issues discussed in the book manifest themselves in the question whether the "democratic turn" is a real or just a virtue one. Democracy generally means governance by the people - but who are the people? What kind of governance by the people can be claimed as democratic - all of the various types that exist or only a single, chosen one? What - if any - is the normative issue of such a governance? Democracy, after all, is not a simple descriptive model of governance; it is deeply rooted in our preferences and hence normative patterns of conduct, which are not yet to be understood as the norm but rather as founding principles. Democracy is a thoroughly normative model. It is always as constructed and uttered in the picture of life at the same time.

This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law.

This work analyzes the "New Ethnicity" of the 1970s as a way of understanding America's political turn to the right in that decade. An upsurge of vocal ethnic consciousness among second-, third-, and fourth-generation Southern and Eastern Europeans, the New Ethnicity simultaneously challenged and emulated earlier identity movements such as Black Power. The movement was more complex than the historical memory of racist, reactionary white ethnic leaders suggests. The movement began with a significant grassroots effort to gain more social welfare assistance for "near poor" white ethnic neighborhoods and ease tensions between the working-class African Americans and whites who lived in close proximity to one another in urban neighborhoods. At the same time, a more militant strain of white ethnicity was created by urban leaders who sought conflict with minorities and liberals. The reassertion of ethnicity necessarily involved the invention of myths, symbols, and traditions, and this process actually served to retard the progressive strain of New Ethnicity and strengthen the position of reactionary leaders and New Right politicians who hoped to encourage racial discord and dismantle social welfare programs. Public intellectuals created a mythical white ethnic who shunned welfare, valued the family, and provided an antidote to liberal elitism and neighborhood breakdown. Corporations and publishers embraced this invented ethnic identity and codified it through consumption. Finally, politicians appropriated the rhetoric of the New Ethnicity while ignoring its demands. The image of hard-working, self-sufficient ethnics who took care of their own neighborhood problems became powerful currency in their effort to create racial division and dismantle New Deal and Great Society protections.

Once at the centre of the American conservative movement, bestselling author and radio host Charles Sykes is a fierce opponent of Donald Trump and the right-wing media that enabled his rise. Sykes presents an impassioned, regretful and deeply thoughtful account of how the American conservative movement came to lose its values. How did a movement that was defined by its belief in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, traditional values and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery and outright falsehood? How the Right Lost its Mind addresses key issues that face American conservatives under a Trump presidency. It asks why so many voters are apparently credulous and immune to factual information reported by responsible media. And why did conservatives decide to overlook, even embrace, so many of Trump's outrages, gaffes, conspiracy theories, falsehoods and smears? Can conservatives govern, or are they content merely to rage? And central to Sykes's discourse is the question of how can the right recover its traditional values and persuade a new generation of their worth.

Benjamin Parke DeWitt's study of the Progressive Era represents a comprehensive history of the theory and practice of politics from a progressive perspective. His account of the history and projections about the future of the progressive science of politics provided the American liberal-progressive tradition with its first full narrative history at a time when it was not yet the dominant interpretation of the American political order. Its greatest importance, however, lies in DeWitt's conception of where the broad-based progressive critique of the Founders' was heading. DeWitt's history of the origins and projected destiny of the progressive tradition commands a respect that places him in the same company as better-known writers. His historical narrative of the liberal progressive tradition was implicit among a number of writers before the Progressive Movement, but no contemporary writer provided a better roadmap of where progressivism was going than DeWitt. What gives DeWitt's critique a twist is his focus on the individualism of the founders, which he regards as the heart of their anti-democratic principles. His critique of this individualism is the foundation for his argument that collectivism is arguably a more democratic alternative.

Benjamin Parke DeWitt is one of the lesser-known, often overlooked writers who worked to establish the liberal library of American political thought. This book deserves to be read as one of the neglected gems of the Progressive Era that it chronicles. This is an important addition to the Library of Liberal Thought series.

Based on interviews with Islamic State insiders, Abdel Bari Atwan reveals the origins and modus operandi of the fastest-growing and richest terrorist group in the world. Outlining its leadership structure and strategies, Atwan describes the group's ideological differences with al-Qa`ida and why IS appear to pose a greater threat to the West. He shows how it has masterfully used social media, Hollywood `blockbuster'-style videos, and even jihadi computer games to spread its message and to recruit young people, from Tunisia to Bradford. As Islamic State continues to dominate the world's media headlines with acts of ruthless violence, Atwan considers its chances of survival and offers indispensable insight into potential government responses to contain the IS threat.

Why did the 1989 Chinese student movement end in violent confrontation at Tiananmen Square, despite the fact that both the Chinese government and the students very much wanted to avoid violence? This puzzle, which lies at the heart of the tragic events at Tiananmen, is addressed here from a fresh perspective that sheds new insight into these dramatic events. Throughout Unintended Outcomes in Social Movements, Deng applies the formal methods of game theory to elucidate some of the contingent, strategic decision-making by both sides in a social-movement/state confrontation, and how those decisions can - and did - lead to an unintended outcome. In identifying the necessary cause of the Tiananmen tragedy, namely a newly created social system with four highly specific properties, this book provides the first adequate explanation of the Tiananmen events. Because of this, it stands to make a significant stride toward convincing students of political conflict of the explanatory power of formal game-theoretic models. This book is an excellent source of reference for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in areas including Chinese politics, social movements, game theory economics, and social theory.

First published in 1986, this text brings together a selection of papers written by the great Alec Nove on development economics, Marxist economies, the Soviet economy, and Law and Politics in the Soviet Union. Reflecting the varied and diverse interests of its distinguished author, the topics range from Soviet Constitutional Law, to Trotsky's view of Collectivization; from a critique of conventional micro-economics, to the economic disaster of the Allende regime in Chile. The author's long-standing immersion in the past and present of the Soviet Union helps to provide the unique insights into the workings of Socialist economies characteristic of Professor Nove's previous work. This volume should be essential reading for anyone interested in development economics, socialist economies, or the problems facing contemporary Soviet economic reformers.

As this book intriguingly explores, for those who would make Rome great again and their victims, ideas of Roman decline and renewal have had a long and violent history. The decline of Rome has been a constant source of discussion for more than 2200 years. Everyone from American journalists in the twenty-first century AD to Roman politicians at the turn of the third century BC have used it as a tool to illustrate the negative consequences of changes in their world. Because Roman history is so long, it provides a buffet of ready-made stories of decline that can help develop the context around any snapshot. And Rome did, in fact, decline and, eventually, fall. An empire that once controlled all or part of more than 40 modern European, Asian, and African countries no longer exists. Roman prophets of decline were, ultimately, proven correct-a fact that makes their modern invocations all the more powerful. If it happened then, it could happen now. The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome tells the stories of the people who built their political and literary careers around promises of Roman renewal as well as those of the victims they blamed for causing Rome's decline. Each chapter offers the historical context necessary to understand a moment or a series of moments in which Romans, aspiring Romans, and non-Romans used ideas of Roman decline and restoration to seize power and remake the world around them. The story begins during the Roman Republic just after 200 BC. It proceeds through the empire of Augustus and his successors, traces the Roman loss of much of western Europe in the fifth century AD, and then follows Roman history as it runs through the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) until its fall in 1453. The final two chapters look at ideas of Roman decline and renewal from the fifteenth century until today. If Rome illustrates the profound danger of the rhetoric of decline, it also demonstrates the rehabilitative potential of a rhetoric that focuses on collaborative restoration, a lesson of great relevance to our world today.

Despite the proliferation of ideational accounts in the last decade or so, the debate over the role of ideas remains caught up in a series of disputes over the ontological foundations, epistemological status and practical pay-off of the (re)turn to ideational explanations. It is thus unsurprising that there is still little clarity about just what sort of an approach an ideational approach is and about what it would take to establish the kind of fully-fledged ideational research programme many seem to assume has already been developed. The contributors in this volume address these dilemmas in diverse but engagingly complementary ways. They argue that what plagues most attempts to accord ideas an explanatory role is the persistence of the perennial dualities in political analysis. In aspiring to eschew the current vogue for dualistic polemic, the present volume reveals elements of dualistic thinking in the ideational turn and assesses the impact of the persistence of these perennial dualisms in the attempt to accord ideas an explanatory role.

The acute poverty, underdevelopment and environmental damages that exist in the Niger Delta region despite abundance of natural resources present a paradox to anyone who cares. It is a fact, that corruption, misappropriation of fund and lack of accountability on the part of most major stakeholders are partly responsible for such paradox. There is no shortage of development theories to tackle the development problems in the region. Lacking is the political will to operate just and effective socio-economic and political structures in the country that could increase chances of development for the poor and disadvantaged in the region. Based on Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and the Catholic Social Teaching, this book presents a development ethics that can serve as ethical orientation to assist those who seek new ways to advance social and environmental development of the Niger Delta.

Contours of African American Politics chronicles the systematic study of African American politics and its subsequent recognition as an established field of scholarly inquiry. African American politics emanates from the demands of the prolonged struggle for black liberation and empowerment. Hence, the study of African American politics has sought to track, codify, and analyze the struggle that has been mounted, and to understand the historic and changing political status of African Americans within American society. This two-volume set presents a selection of scholarship on African American politics as it appeared in "The National Political Science Review" from its initial launch in 1989 to the spring of 2009. Represented are contributions from some of the leading scholars of African American politics, who have helped to establish and sustain the field. The volumes are organized around themes that derive from the unfolding real-life drama of African American politics and its subsequent scholarly treatment.

The result is a window into the political efforts that meld the historically disparate strands of black political expressions into a reconstructed and strategically nimble, electoral-based mass mobilization necessary for optimizing the impact of the African American vote. Sections in the volumes also chronicle the evolution of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists as a professional organization. The two volumes illuminate a pivotal epoch in black political empowerment and provide a context for the future of black politics.