In April 1965, Che Guevara set out clandestinely from Havana to Congo to head a force of some 150 veteran Cuban soldiers to assist the Congolese Patrice Lumumba Battalion, four years after the assassination of the democratically elected socialist president of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Because this diary deals with what Che admits was a “failure”, he examines every painful detail about what went wrong in order to draw constructive lessons for planned future guerrilla movements.

Unique among his books, Congo Diary gives us Che’s brutal honesty and his story-telling ability as he recounts this fascinating episode of guerrilla warfare unblinkingly and without sugar coating or jargon.

Considered by some to be Che’s best book, it is also one of the few that he had a chance to edit for publication after writing it.

A sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors by 'the world's most famous classicist' (Guardian).

Cruel control freaks, diligent workaholics or extravagant teenagers? What were the emperors of Rome really like?

In her international best-seller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now, she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE).

Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained?

Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

The 1930s and 40s were tumultuous decades in South Africa’s history. The economy declined sharply in the wake of the Wall Street crash, giving rise to a huge number of poor whites and the growth of a militant and aggressive Afrikaner nationalism that often took its lead from the Nazis in Germany.

A Perfect Storm reveals how the right-wing’s malevolent message moved from the margins to the centre of political life; how antisemitism seeped into mainstream political life with real and lasting consequences. Milton Shain, South Africa’s leading scholar of modern Jewish history, brings into sharp relief the ‘Jewish Problem’, detailing the rise of influential organisations such as the Grey Shirts and the New Order, which fanned the flames of antisemitism. He devotes considerable attention to the Ossewa-Brandwag, which, by 1941, constituted the largest yet mobilisation of Afrikaners.

The National Party itself contributed to the climate of hostility to Jews. It was instrumental in ensuring that only few of the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and elsewhere were permitted as immigrants. The National Party contributed to the prevailing climate of Jew-baiting. Indeed, some of its worst offenders were accorded high office after 1948 when the National Party came to power.

Whetsho-otsile Joseph (Joe) Seremane is the founding federal chair of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa. Joe’s story spans six decades and tells of a visionary who survived incarceration at Robben Island, exile to Bophuthatswana and further incarceration at Fort Glamorgan.

Joe starts out as a champion of the banned People’s Africanist Congress but gradually develops a more holistic viewpoint. He concludes that he can contribute to the new democracy by helping to swell the ranks of the opposition. Eventually, in 2002, Joe finds his way to the Democratic Alliance as their founding federal chair. Hurt and disappointment come his way as he is seen as a traitor and a coconut by erstwhile comrades and co-prisoners.

As democracy in his beloved homeland starts to shed its skin of idealism and hope, he has to grapple with grave personal loss and a compelling question: Who is the enemy really?

In his foreword Tony Leon, erstwhile leader of the DA, notes: "I commend Fly the Tattered Dream Coat, both for its deep dive into this country’s history-in-the-making and the human story it describes of one of the more significant but underappreciated fighters for South Africa’s freedom."

In this engaging and authentic record of Joe’s storied careers and background, Dr Maske recounts Joe’s presence in my life at both its happiest and saddest…

Drawing from several hundred first-person accounts, most of which are unpublished, Spear reshapes our understanding of Mandela by focusing on this intense but relatively neglected period of escalation in the movement against apartheid.

Landau’s book is not a biography, nor is it a history of a militia or an army; rather, it is a riveting story about ordinary civilians debating and acting together in extremis.

Contextualizing Mandela and MK’s activities amid anti-colonial change and Black Marxism in the early 1960s, Spear also speaks to today’s transnational anti-racism protests and worldwide struggles against oppression.

An award-winning historian and journalist tells the very human story of apartheid's afterlife, tracing the fates of South African insurgents, collaborators, and the security police through the tale of the clandestine photo album used to target apartheid's enemies. From the 1960s until the early 1990s, the South African security police and counterinsurgency units collected over 7,000 photographs of apartheid's enemies.

The political rogue's gallery was known as the "terrorist album," copies of which were distributed covertly to police stations throughout the country. Many who appeared in the album were targeted for surveillance. Sometimes the security police tried to turn them; sometimes the goal was elimination. All of the albums were ordered destroyed when apartheid's violent collapse began. But three copies survived the memory purge.

With full access to one of these surviving albums, award-winning South African historian and journalist, Jacob Dlamini investigates the story behind these images: their origins, how they were used, and the lives they changed. Extensive interviews with former targets and their family members testify to the brutal and often careless work of the police. Although the police certainly hunted down resisters, the terrorist album also contains mug shots of bystanders and even regime supporters.

Their inclusion is a stark reminder that apartheid's guardians were not the efficient, if morally compromised, law enforcers of legend but rather blundering agents of racial panic. With particular attentiveness to the afterlife of apartheid, Dlamini uncovers the stories of former insurgents disenchanted with today?s South Africa, former collaborators seeking forgiveness, and former security police reinventing themselves as South Africa's newest export: "security consultants" serving as mercenaries for Western nations and multinational corporations.

The Terrorist Album is a brilliant evocation of apartheid's tragic caprice, ultimate failure, and grim legacy.

As an ANC insider, Oscar van Heerden had a ringside seat at the ANC elective conference at NASREC in 2022. Here he presents a gripping account of how political power changed hands and what was at stake as Cyril Ramaphosa battled to consolidate his power.

Van Heerden does not simply give us the numbers, the money, the delegates, the switching, the promises and the backstabbing, but in this powerful account of the inner workings of a cripplingly divided political party, he himself is part of the story, having to contend with his own great disappointment with the party of liberation.

Vivid and unputdownable, Is the Party Over? is a future classic and a must read for these testing times.

What is your stake in the upcoming 2024 election in South Africa – the most crucial election since 1994? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the outcome? As a businessperson, consumer, worker or farmer, you will be affected by the election results and the significant changes that are likely to appear in South Africa’s political economy. The 2024 election gives South Africans the opportunity to decide what the country and its political leadership will look like in the future.

Tipping Point – Turmoil Or Reform? examines some critical questions about the country’s political and socioeconomic landscape today and whether the 2024 election outcome is likely to signal more gloom or will it rather pave the way for positive and enduring reforms. Edited by prominent economist Raymond Parsons, the book comprises pieces by some of South Africa’s leading intellectuals and thought leaders, all of whom have seriously considered South Africa’s post-election future.

Among the major themes emerging from the different chapters, which will help to steer the national agenda in the months and years ahead, are: South Africa’s political prospects after 2024; the future role of coalition politics in South Africa; the dynamics between business and the economy; what South Africa’s geopolitical leanings mean for the country’s trade competitiveness; how to make local government work; need for greater community engagement and why doing business in South Africa is challenging.

Tipping Point – Turmoil Or Reform? is as absorbing as it is frank, informing readers (and, importantly, voters) about the harsh reality of where South Africa is today but also offering them hope of a much better tomorrow – which will largely depend on the critical choices they make during this watershed election year for South Africa.

Dare To Believe is a poignant narrative of resilience, courage and hope in the face of adversity. Mmusi Maimane invites readers on a journey through his personal experiences, from the hardships of Apartheid-era Soweto to the corridors of power in post-liberation South Africa.

With insights drawn from his political career and a deep commitment to justice, Maimane shares the travails of party politics, the difficult task of transforming the DA, and his vision for a South Africa where all races can live and prosper together.

This book challenges us to confront the realities of inequality and division while daring to envision a nation united in prosperity and peace. It is a call to restore democracy back to the people and a compelling articulation of Maimane's belief in the transformative power of unity and the promise of a better tomorrow.

South Africa’s general election of 2024 saw the African National Congress losing its majority at the national level for the first time since the arrival of democracy in 1994. To maintain its rule, President Cyril Ramaphosa led his party into a Government of National Unity (GNU) centered around a hitherto unlikely coalition with the opposition Democratic Alliance. Election 2024, South Africa: Countdown to Coalition presents the first comprehensive analysis of this historic process.

It outlines the extensive social and economic crisis that preceded the election; provides detailed analyses of the election campaigns of the political parties; highlights the dramatic rise Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party; places the GNU against the recent experiences of coalition formation at provincial and local level; offers comprehensive summaries of voter participation and both the national and provincial results; and discusses prospects for the GNU’s survival and its possible long-term consequences.

Written in a highly accessible style, Election 2024, South Africa is an indispensable resource for all those wanting to understand South Africa’s contemporary politics.

Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this book calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine political community beyond majorities and minorities.

In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe—from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan—the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority.

The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe’s nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. By establishing Israel through the minoritization of Palestinian Arabs, Zionist settlers followed the North American example. The result has been another cycle of violence. Neither Settler nor Native offers a vision for arresting this historical process.

Mamdani rejects the “criminal” solution attempted at Nuremberg, which held individual perpetrators responsible without questioning Nazism as a political project and thus the violence of the nation-state itself. Instead, political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors—victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries—based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native. Mamdani points to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as an unfinished project, seeking a state without a nation.

Amidst a backdrop of political unrest and voter disillusionment, South Africa finds itself at a crossroads, challenging its resiliency like never before. Bruce Whitfield, leveraging his deep connection with the nation's most innovative minds, presents The One Thing: Small Ideas, Big Outcomes, A Brighter Future for South Africa. This book is a clarion call for focused action, inspired by the wisdom that when everything is a priority, nothing truly is.

Through exclusive insights from business leaders to pioneers in various fields, Whitfield orchestrates a compelling narrative on the transformative power of single, impactful ideas.

'The One Thing' is not just a book; it's a blueprint for individual and collective commitment to propelling South Africa towards a brighter, more potent future.

Major scholars examine different aspects of the ICU's record in the 1920s and 1930s, assessing its achievements and its failures in relation to the post-apartheid present.

The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)―the largest black political organization in southern Africa before the 1940s―was active in six African colonies, as well as in global trade union networks. Labour Struggles in Southern Africa provides fresh perspectives on the ICU, exploring its record in the 1920s and 1930s and assessing its achievements and failures in relation to the present.

In its One Big Union approach to protecting workers' rights, its emphasis on economic freedoms, its internationalism, and its robust protection of women and migrant workers, the ICU fundamentally challenged the axioms, tactics, and programs of rival organizations like the African National Congress. Reflecting that, this book demonstrates that the legacies of the ICU continue to be of crucial contemporary relevance.

The study of institutions, a core concept in comparative politics, has produced many rich and influential theories on the economic and political effects of institutions, yet it has been less successful at theorizing their origins. In Fixing Democracy, Javier Corrales develops a theory of institutional origins that concentrates on constitutions and levels of power within them. He reviews numerous Latin American constituent assemblies and constitutional amendments to explore why some democracies expand rather than restrict presidential powers and why this heightened presidentialism discourages democracy. His signal theoretical contribution is his elaboration on power asymmetries. Corrales determines that conditions of reduced power asymmetry make constituent assemblies more likely to curtail presidential powers, while weaker opposition and heightened power asymmetry is an indicator that presidential powers will expand. The bargain-based theory that he uses focuses on power distribution and provides a more accurate variable in predicting actual constitutional outcomes than other approaches based on functionalism or ideology. While the empirical focus is Latin America, Fixing Democracy contributes a broadly applicable theory to the scholarship both institutions and democracy.

From Gandhi's movement to win Indian independence to the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, an expanding number of citizens have used nonviolent action to win political goals. While such events have captured the public imagination, they have also generated a new surge of scholarly interest in the field of nonviolence and civil resistance studies. Although researchers have produced new empirical data, theories, and insights into the phenomenon of nonviolent struggle, the field is still quite unfamiliar to many students and scholars. In Nonviolent Struggle: Theories, Strategies, and Dynamics, sociologist Sharon Nepstad provides a succinct introduction to the field of civil resistance studies, detailing its genesis, key concepts and debates, and a summary of empirical findings. Nepstad depicts the strategies and dynamics at play in nonviolent struggles, and analyzes the factors that shape the trajectory and outcome of civil resistance movements. The book draws on a vast array of historical examples, including the U.S. civil rights movement, the Indonesian uprising against President Suharto, the French Huguenot resistance during World War II, and Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers. Nepstad describes both principled and pragmatic nonviolent traditions and explains various categories of nonviolent action, concluding with an assessment of areas for future research. A comprehensive treatment of the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent resistance, Nonviolent Struggle is essential reading for students, scholars, and anyone with a general interest in peace studies and social change.

Revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, and reformers the world over appeal to democracy to justify their actions. But when political factions compete over the right to act in "the people's" name, who is to decide? Although the problem is as old as the great revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, events from the Arab Spring to secession referendums suggest that today it is hardly any closer to being solved. This book defends a new theory of democratic legitimacy and change that provides an answer. Christopher Meckstroth shows why familiar views that identify democracy with timeless principles or institutions fall into paradox when asked to make sense of democratic founding and change. Solving the problem, he argues, requires shifting focus to the historical conditions under which citizens work out what it will mean to govern themselves in a democratic way. The only way of sorting out disputes without faith in progress is to show, in Socratic fashion, that some parties' claims to speak for "the people" cannot hold up even on their own terms. Meckstroth builds his argument on provocative and closely-argued interpretations of Plato, Kant, and Hegel, suggesting that familiar views of them as foundationalist metaphysicians misunderstand their debt to a method of radical doubt pioneered by Socrates. Recovering this tradition of antifoundational argument requires rethinking the place of German idealism in the history of political thought and opens new directions for contemporary democratic theory. The historical and Socratic theory of democracy the book defends makes possible an entirely new way of approaching struggles over contested notions of progress, popular sovereignty, political judgment and democratic change.

At a moment when the term "Democracy " is evoked to express inchoate aspirations for peace and social change or particular governmental systems that may or may not benefit more than a select minority of the population, this book examines attempts from ancient Mesopotemia to the democratic movements of the early twenty-first century to sustain and improve their own lives and those of outsiders who have migrated into territory they regard as their own. Democratic activists have formed organizations to regulate the distribution of water, to restore the environment, and to assure that they and their children will have a future. They have organized their relations with deities and those who held secular power, and they have created particular institutions that they hoped would help them shape a good, free, and creative life for themselves and those who follow. They have also created laws and representative bodies to serve their needs on a regular basis and have written about the difficulties those they have elected to office have maintaining their ties to those who brought them to power in the first place. Since early times, proponents of direct or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders of representative institutions that claim singular power over democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim the initiative to define what democracy should mean and who should manage it. Frequently people in small communities, trade unions, repressed, exploited, or denigrated racial, religious, political, or sexual groups have marched forward using the language of democracy to find space for themselves and their ideas at the center of political life. Sometimes they have re-interpreted the old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the major issues of their time. Whatever conclusions they come to, they are only temporary since changing times require new solutions, assuring that democracy can only survive as a continuous process. As such and as a system of beliefs, democracy has many flaws. But looking cross-culturally and trans-historically, it still seems like democracy still holds promise for improving the lives of all the world's people.

Why is it that some social movements engaged in contentious politics experience radicalization whereas others do not? The Dynamics of Radicalization offers an innovative reply by investigating how and when social movement organizations switch from a nonviolent mode of contention to a violent one. Moving beyond existing explanations that posit aggressive motivations, grievances or violence-prone ideologies, this book demonstrates how these factors gain and lose salience in the context of relational dynamics among various parties and actors involved in episodes of contention. Drawing on a comparative historical analysis of al-Qaeda, the Red Brigades, the Cypriot EOKA, the authors develop a relational, mechamism-based theory that advances our understanding of political violence in several important ways by identifying turning points in the radicalization process, similar mechanisms at work across each case, and the factors that drive or impede radicalization. The Dynamics of Radicalization offers a counterpoint to mainstream works on political violence, which often presume that political violence and terrorism is rooted in qualities intrinsic to or developed by groups considered to be radical.

The al-Qaeda Franchise asks why al-Qaeda adopted a branching-out strategy, introducing seven franchises spread over the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. After all, transnational terrorist organizations can expand through other organizational strategies. Forming franchises was not an inevitable outgrowth of al-Qaeda's ideology or its U.S.-focused strategy. The efforts to create local franchises have also undermined one of al-Qaeda's primary achievements: the creation of a transnational entity based on religious, not national, affiliation. The book argues that al-Qaeda's branching out strategy was not a sign of strength, but instead a response to its decline in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Franchising reflected an escalation of al-Qaeda's commitments in response to earlier strategic mistakes, leaders' hubris, and its diminished capabilities. Although the introduction of new branches helped al-Qaeda create a frightening image far beyond its actual capabilities, ultimately this strategy neither increased the al-Qaeda threat, nor enhanced the organization's political objectives. In fact, the rise of ISIS from an al-Qaeda branch to the dominant actor in the jihadi camp demonstrates how expansion actually incurred heavy costs for al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda Franchise goes beyond explaining the adoption of a branching out strategy, also exploring particular expansion choices. Through nine case studies, it analyzes why al-Qaeda formed branches in some arenas but not others, and why its expansion in some locations, such as Yemen, took the form of in-house franchising (with branches run by al-Qaeda's own fighters), while other locations, such as Iraq and Somalia, involved merging with groups already operating in the target arena. It ends with an assessment of al-Qaeda's future in light of the turmoil in the Middle East, the ascendance of ISIS, and US foreign policy.

Originally published in 1939, this is both a far-reaching history and an eyewitness account of the communist revolution in China. Contains a number of excellent historical photographs. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: In Search of Red China - The Road To The Red Capital - In "Defended Peace" - Genesis of A Communist - The Long March - Red Star In The North West - En Route To The Front - With The Red Army - With The Red Army - War And Peace - Back To Pao An - White World Again

Looking at political mobilization in the years leading up to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, one can notice a stark disparity between the number of people who participated in online organizing and the number of individuals who protested in the streets. During one silent demonstration organized by the We are all Khaled Said Facebook page in 2010, when the numbers in the streets were limited, one activist posted, "Where are the people who said they were coming? Where are the 10,000 men and women?" For years prior to the Arab Spring, opposition activists in Egypt organized protests with limited success. So why and how did thousands of Egyptian citizens suddenly take to the streets against the Mubarak regime in January 2011? Contesting the Repressive State not only answers this question, but asks specifically why and how people who are not part of political movements choose to engage or not engage in anti-government protest under repressive regimes. The central argument is that individuals are rational actors and their decisions to protest or not protest are based on the intersection of three factors: political opportunity structures, mobilizing structures, and framing processes (or the way in which the media presents particular issues). In turn, specific situations and frames trigger emotion in people, and it is this emotion that drives people to protest. Each chapter looks at a different facet of the revolutionary process (grievances, online participation, media framing, government violence) and identifies a relationship between key structural factors in each and the emotional responses they produce. Contesting the Repressive State is based on 170 interviews conducted in Egypt, during the Arab Spring, both with people who participated in street protests and those who did not. Ultimately, Kira D. Jumet explores how social media, violent government repression, changes in political opportunities, and the military influenced individual decisions to protest or not protest.

Risk and Hyperconnectivity brings together for the first time three paradigms: new risk theory, neoliberalization theory, and connectivity theory, to illuminate how the kaleidoscope of risk events in the opening years of the new century has recharged a neoliberal battlespace of media, economy, and security. Hoskins and Tulloch argue that hyperconnectivity is both a conduit of risk and a form of risk in itself, and that it alters the ways in which we experience events and remember them. Through interdisciplinary dialogue and case study analysis they offer original perspectives on the key questions of risk of our age, including: What is the path to a balance between individual privacy and state (or corporate) security? Is hyperconnectivity itself a new risk condition of our time? How do remembering and forgetting shape citizen insecurity and cultures of risk, and legitimize neoliberal governance? How do journalists operate as public intellectuals of risk? Through probing a series of risk events that have already scarred the twenty-first century, Hoskins and Tulloch show how both established and emergent media are central in shaping past, present and future horizons of neoliberalism, while also propelling wide pressure for its alternatives on those ranging from economics students worldwide to potential political leaders cultivated by austerity policies.

How do ideologies shape international relations in general and Middle Eastern countries' relations with the United States in particular? The Clash of Ideologies by Mark L. Haas explores this critical question. Haas argues that leaders' ideological beliefs are likely to have profound effects on these individuals' perceptions of international threats. These threat perceptions, in turn, shape leaders' core security policies, including choices of allies and enemies and efforts to spread their ideological principles abroad as a key means of advancing their interests. Two variables are particularly important in this process: the degree of ideological differences dividing different groups of decision makers ( "ideological distance "), and the number of prominent ideologies that are present in a particular system ( "ideological polarity "). The argument is tested in four case studies of states' foreign policies, primarily since the end of the Cold War: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. As the argument predicts, ideological differences in these cases were a key cause of international conflict and ideological similarities a source of cooperation. Moreover, different ideological groups in the same country at the same time often possessed very different understandings of their threat environments, and thus very different foreign policy preferences. These are findings that other prominent international relations theories, particularly realism, cannot explain. Clash of Ideologies goes beyond advancing theoretical debates in the international relations literature. It also aims to provide policy guidance on key international security issues. These prescriptions are designed to advance America's interests in the Middle East in particular, namely how U.S. leaders should best respond to the ideological dynamics that exist in the region.

This volume reflects on the first administration of Evo Morales and his party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the history of the movement, and Bolivian politics and society under the MAS since 2005. Morales has been widely touted as the first indigenous leader of a South American country since the European Conquest.

The book originated in a November 2009 symposium, held when Bolivia's presidential elections were imminent, with the support of the Bolivia Information Forum at the Institute of the Americas (ISA) in London. It includes chapters from contributors to the symposium and additional essays commissioned from other leading experts.

Contents 1. The Historical Background to the Rise of the Movimiento al Socialismo, 1952?2005 2. Towards a "Traditional Party"? Internal Organisation and Change in the MAS in Bolivia 3. Bolivia's New Constitution and Its Implications 4. Electoral Validation for Morales and the MAS (1999?2010) 5. The Bolivianisation of Washington?La Paz Relations: Evo Morales' Foreign Policy in Historical Context 6. Pachakuti in Bolivia, 2008?10: A Personal Diary

Contributors include Herbert Klein (Columbia University and Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford University), Sven Harten (International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group), Willem Assies (Wageningen University, the Netherlands), John Crabtree (Latin American Centre, Oxford University), Martin Sivak (author of four books about contemporary Bolivia), and James Dunkerley (Queen Mary, University of London).

Barack Obama is often lauded as a 'pragmatist, ' yet when most people employ the term, they mean it in the vaguest sense: that he's practical and willing to compromise to get things done. However, the public philosophy of pragmatism, which has been the subject of a rich revival in the past couple of decades, is far more than this. First developed in the late nineteenth century, pragmatism is primarily a way of thinking--an anti-dualist philosophy that attempts to overcome the dichotomies between self and object, nature and culture, mind and body, theory and practice, and fact and value. When applied to governance, pragmatists advocate the use of tactics like third party mediation and problem-solving to achieve anti-dualist principles: cosmopolitan localism, analytical holism, progressive conservatism, and processual structuralism.
In Pragmatist Governance, Chris Ansell begins with a theory of the concept and then explains why the approach is ideal for addressing today's governance problems. For instance, while many think that bureaucracy's unchecked growth is the fundamental problem facing democracy today, pragmatism suggests the opposite: that public agencies can effectively manage the relationship between governance and democracy if they focus on building consent for public problem-solving. Ansell argues that wishing away bureaucracy will not do given what we know about the indispensible role of institutions in contemporary governance. Utilizing pragmatist concepts, Ansell rethinks the design of institutions, arguing that they are neither the simple products of rational design that can be endlessly tinkered with nor 'congealed taste'--where institutions represent the timeless customs and values of a people. Along with overcoming this dualism, Ansell also challenges us to rethink our approach to governance. Instead of moving from one extreme to the other--from bureaucracy to 'post-bureaucracy' or 'public entrepreneurialism'--pragmatism would not merely seek to replace one (hierarchical bureaucracy) with the other (a 'flat, ' entrepreneurial organization), but rather to hitch the two approaches together in an innovative amalgam where organizational leaders constantly interact with and learn from street-level bureaucrats.
Pragmatist Governance concludes that if government is to regain public trust, the technical knowledge of experts must be brought together with sensitivity to local problems, situations, and knowledge. The answer lies not, however, in a diminished bureaucracy. That may only deepen distrust. Rather, the emphasis should be on taking the best of both sides to find innovative and effective ways to solve enduring public problems.