Populism is a powerful force today, but its full scope has eluded the analytical tools of both orthodox and heterodox 'populism studies'. This book provides a valuable alternative perspective. It reconstructs in detail for the first time the sociological analyses of US demagogues by members of the Frankfurt School and compares these with contemporary approaches. Modern demagogy emerges as a key under-researched feature of populism, since populist movements, whether 'left' or 'right', are highly susceptible to 'demagogic capture'. The book also details the culture industry's populist contradictions - including its role as an incubator of modern demagogues - from the 1930s through to today's social media and 'Trumpian psychotechnics'. Featuring a previously unpublished text by Adorno on modern demagogy as an appendix, it will be of interest to researchers and students in critical theory, sociology, politics, German studies, philosophy and history of ideas, as well as all those concerned about the rise of demagogic populism today. -- .

Providing documentary history of the idea of sovereignty from classical theory to the global age, the diachronic perspective of this work illuminates the characteristic feature of modern sovereignty: the anthropomorphism of nations. The synchronic perspective describes conflicting elements within the history of sovereignty by identifying its encounter with nationalism and constitutionalism. The historical examination of sovereignty leads the author to conclude that the recent transformation of the principle of sovereignty can be understood in the context of new international constitutionalism.

This book shifts analytical focus from macro-politicization and securitization of Islam to Muslims' choices, practices and public expressions of faith. An empirically rich analysis, the book provides rich cross-country evidence on the emergence of autonomous faith communities as well as the evolution of Islam in the broader European context.

Hailed in the Times Literary Supplement as ‘probably the finest piece of non-fiction to come out of South Africa since the end of apartheid’, The Dream Deferred is back in print and updated with a brilliant new epilogue.

The prosperous Mbeki clan lost everything to apartheid. Yet the family saw its favourite son, Thabo, rise to become president of South Africa in 1999. A decade later, Mbeki was ousted by his own party and his legacy is bitterly contested – particularly over his handling of the AIDS epidemic and the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Through the story of the Mbeki family, award-wining journalist Mark Gevisser tells the gripping tale of the last tumultuous century of South Africa life, following the family’s path to make sense of the liberation struggle and the future that South Africa has inherited. At the centre of the story is Mbeki, a visionary yet tragic figure who led South Africa to freedom but was not able to overcome the difficulties of his own dislocated life.

It is 15 years since Mbeki was unceremoniously dumped by the ANC, giving rise to the wasted years under Jacob Zuma. With the benefit of hindsight, and as Mbeki reaches the age of 80, Gevisser examines the legacy of the man who succeeded Mandela.

In this major new work, Thompson develops an original account of ideology and relates it to the analysis of culture and mass communication in modern Societies.

Thompson offers a concise and critical appraisal of major contributions to the theory of ideology, from Marx and Mannheim, to Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas. He argues that these thinkers - and social and political theorists more generally - have failed to deal adequately with the nature of mass communication and its role in the modern world. In order to overcome this deficiency, Thompson undertakes a wide-ranging analysis of the development of mass communication, outlining a distinctive social theory of the mass media and their impact.

The important and controversial issue of cross-border security cooperation against the IRA during before the Good Friday agreement is woefully underrepresented in the literature on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. On this first book on the subject, Henry Patterson brings the role of the Irish State into sharp focus at a time when dealing with the past has become a central issue in Northern Irish Politics. It establishes the crucial importance of the border to the IRA campaign and shows why successive British governments considered the Republic a 'safe haven' for the IRA. It reveals the devastating effects of republican violence on Protestants in border areas and contains new archival material that sheds light on the Kingsmill Massacre, the role of the SAS, the murder of Lord Mountbattern as well as the Garda collusion. It also highlights how Mrs Thatcher's concern about the issue of border security led her to contemplate major concessions to the Irish government and how her Irish counterpart, Taoiseach Charles Haughey, sought to exploit this concern.

Xun Zi, one of the principal thinkers of the pre-imperial period and as such still widely read, ought to appear on any reading list on Chinese intellectual history.
Dr. Sato's volume deals with the origin and formation of Xun Zi's political thought, with close focus on the intellectual activity of the Jixia Academy and its impact on this synthesizer's theory on rituals and social norms.
The author convincingly deals with the problems of textual authenticity and biography. The main part of the work treats the shift of intellectual inquiry from an argument of ethical matters to an analysis of the principle(s) of socio-political mechanism, thus showing Xun Zi as a formative synthesizer of the two main streams of early Chinese intellectual discourse.

Jihadist ideology inspires a diverse and decentralized collection of radical groups to fight alleged enemies of Islam and to attempt to "restore" a holy caliphate to unite Muslim peoples across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. " Islamic Radicalism and Global Jihad" provides unique insights into the philosophical foundations, strategic vision, organizational dynamics, and tactics of the modern jihadist movement -- with specific attention to its primary driver, Al-Qa'ida.

Springer, Regens, and Edger draw heavily on Arabic language sources seldom seen in the West to explain what jihadists want and how radical thinkers have distorted the teachings of Islam to convince followers to pursue terrorism as a religious duty. With sophisticated and systematic analysis, the authors lead their readers on a fascinating intellectual journey through the differing ideas, goals, and vulnerabilities of the jihadist movement as it has evolved over time. The authors also impart wisdom from their own professional experience with terrorism, counterinsurgency, and intelligence to provide scholars, students, counterterrorism professionals, and general readers with this accessible overview of key radical Islamic thinkers and today's jihadists.

This book challenges the view that there was a smooth and inevitable progression towards liberalism in early nineteenth-century England. It examines the argument used by the high Whigs that the landed aristocracy still had a positive contribution to make to the welfare of the people. This argument came under scrutiny as the laissez-faire state met with serious criticism in the 1830s and 1840s, when the majority of people proved unwilling to accept the `compromise' forged between the middle classes and other sections of the landed elite, and mass movements for political and social reform proliferated. The Whigs' readiness to embrace these pressures kept them in power for sixteen of the twenty-two years between 1830 and 1852, and allowed them to serve as the midwives of the `Victorian origins of the welfare state'. Drawing on a rich variety of original sources, including many country house archives, Peter Mandler paints a vivid composite picture of the high aristocracy at the peak of its wealth and power, and provides a provocative and original analysis of how their rejection of middle-class manners helped them to govern Britain in two troubled decades of social unrest.

Since the late 1970s China has undergone a great transformation, during which time the country has witnessed an outpouring of competing schools of thought. This book analyzes the major schools of political thought redefining China's transformation and the role Chinese thinkers are playing in the post-Mao era.

A concise and lucid explanation of what religious freedom is and isn't. Increasingly, conservative religious groups are using religious liberty as a sword to lash out at others. In this forcefully argued defense of the separation of church and state, Robert Boston makes it clear that the religious freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment is an individual right, the right of personal conscience, not a license allowing religious organizations to discriminate against and control others. The book examines the controversy over birth control, same-sex marriage, religion in public schools, the intersection of faith and politics, and the "war on Christmas," among other topics. Boston concludes with a series of recommendations for resolving clashes between religious liberty claims and individual rights.

Why did some Communist and Middle-Eastern dictatorships, those in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Iran, remained defiantly stable during the onset of a democratic age in the 1980s and early 1990s? The book offers an explanation based upon external relations - the regimes' defiance of external military or political foes - and then searches for alternative or supplementary explanations by examining the changes that occurred in these dictatorships' political structures, ideologies and economic policies during 1980-94.

In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was closely related to the climate of the Cold War, in which the demonization of socialism contributed to a dismissal of all alternatives to capitalism. This book studies how American novels and films of the long 1950s reflect the loss of the utopian imagination and mirror the growing concern that capitalism brought routinization, alienation, and other dehumanizing consequences. The volume relates the decline of the utopian vision to the rise of late capitalism, with its expanding globalization and consumerism, and to the beginnings of postmodernism.

In addition to well-known literary novels, such as NabokoV's "Lolita, " Booker explores a large body of leftist fiction, popular novels, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. The book argues that while the canonical novels of the period employ a utopian aesthetic, that aesthetic tends to be very weak and is not reinforced by content. The leftist novels, on the other hand, employ a realist aesthetic but are utopian in their exploration of alternatives to capitalism. The study concludes that the utopian energies in cultural productions of the long 1950s are very weak, and that these works tend to dismiss utopian thinking as na DEGREESDive or even sinister. The weak utopianism in these works tends to be reflected in characteristics associated with postmodernism.

This thoughtful study has a two-fold purpose. The first is to examine the close relationship between the philosophy of American pragmatism and the idea of planning, and the second is to explore how to approach or think about recalcitrant social problems. Contemporary society's primary response to the issue of social problems is to turn to professional expertise. No sooner is a problem identified than a profession emerges to claim it. But intractable social problems, such as poverty or racism, show the limits of professional social inquiry. Is it the method of inquiry that is at fault, or does the failure lie in a simplistic and narrow view of reason? In exploring these questions, the author turns to the pragmatic philosophy of Charles Pierce and John Dewey to develop a coherent approach to such problems. She concludes that the lasting and meaningful changes needed to address the major problems we face today call for the cultivation of a culture of democratic planning that values inclusive communities, social and environmental justice, and public, practical knowledge.

This book examines human-interest stories, unpacking from them violence inherent to neoliberalism, and considers if it is possible to find in these stories hints of people and labour that suggest other narratives.

Utilizing a new and original framework for examining the role of intellectuals in countries transitioning to democracy, Bozoki analyses the rise and fall of dissident intellectuals in Hungary in the late 20th century. He shows how that framework is applicable to other countries too as he forensically examines their activities. Bozoki argues that the Hungarian intellectuals did not become a 'New Class'. By rolling transition, he means an incremental, non-violent, elite driven political transformation which is based on the rotation of agency, and it results in a new regime. This is led mainly by different groups of intellectuals who do not construct a vanguard movement but create an open network which might transform itself into different political parties. Their roles changed from dissidents to reformers, to movement organizers and negotiators through the periods of dissidence, open network building, roundtable negotiations, parliamentary activities, and new movement politics. Through the prism of political sociology, the author focuses on the following questions: Who were the dissident intellectuals and what did they want? Under what conditions do intellectuals rebel and what are the patterns of their protest? This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and public intellectuals around the world aiming to promote human rights and democracy.

Walter analyzes the history of American radicals of the left (socialists, communists, and radical liberals) from their emergence as an opinion-shaping force during the Great Depression to the present, and concludes that theirs is a fundamentally negative view of American social and political history. Walter argues that radical leftists have blunted reasonable political policy and prevented the achievement of desirable social goals, and that their dissidence combines a naive faith in revolutionary leaders, an unrealistic hope for perfect social justice, and an implacable hatred of free enterprise. According to Walter, radical leftists, despite often noble intentions, have been a destructive force in American history.

"The Rise and Fall of Leftist Radicalism in America" attempts to understand left-wing radicalism by viewing the movement as a whole, as it reacted to the central national and international events of the last sixty years. In particular, Walter discusses labor agitation in the 1930s and 1940s; radical leftist support of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China; McCarthyism; opposition to the war in Vietnam; and today's pre-eminent radical cause, environmentalism. This volume is recommended for political scientists, historians, and political philosophers.

Historically leftist ideas and theories have had a profound impact on modern Jewish life. But, the left's impact on the Jewish community has greatly diminished today. Nonetheless, it can still be detected in the tendency of American Jews to vote for the liberal camp. This political tendency has also influenced Jewish communities actions as illustrated by the large numbers of Jews who participated in the civil rights movements of the post-World War II period and in the so-called new Left.

Essential Papers on Jews and the Left presents a sweeping portrait of the defining impact of the left on modern Jewish politics and culture in Europe, Palestine/Israel, and the New World. The contributions in the first part, entitled The Jewish Left, discuss specifically Jewish radical organizations such as the Bund and Poale Zion. The second section, Jews in the Left, explores the activities of Jews in general left wing politics, emphasizing their role in the Russian revolutionary movement. In the final section, The Left and the Jews, the essays examine the attitudes of the left in Europe and America toward the Jewish question, including the key issue of Karl Marx and his reputedly anti-Jewish attitudes.

Despite its manifest failures, the narrative of neoliberalism retains its grip on the public mind and the policies of governments all over the world. By this narrative, less regulation and more ‘animal spirits’ capitalism produces not only greater prosperity, but more freedom for individuals in society - and is therefore morally better.

But, in The Road to Freedom Stiglitz asks, whose freedom are we – should we be – thinking about? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? Should the freedoms of corporations be allowed to impinge upon those of individuals in the ways they now do? Taking on giants of neoliberalism such as Hayek and Friedman and examining how public opinion is formed, Stiglitz reclaims the language of freedom from the right to show that far from ‘free’ – unregulated – markets promoting growth and enterprise, they in fact reduce it, lessening economic opportunities for majorities and siphoning wealth from the many to the few – both individuals and countries. He shows how neoliberal economics and its implied moral system have impacted our legal and social freedoms in surprising ways, from property and intellectual rights, to education and social media.

Stiglitz’s eye, as always, is on how we might create the true human flourishing which should be the great aim of our economic and social system, and offers an alternative to that prevailing today. The Road to Freedom offers a powerful re-evaluation of democracy, economics and what constitutes a good society—and provides a roadmap of how we might achieve it.