This book comprehensively collects the thinking - over the last 25 years - of one the most important contemporary scholars in the field of ideology studies. Clearly organised, it expounds on the changing nature of the sub-discipline, its components and methods of investigation. As such, it serves the need for a general, well-informed identification and elaboration of thematic possibilities in current ideology studies and represents the most developed and productive methodological approach to the study of ideologies in the last three decades. Freeden presents ideology studies as an evolving and vibrant field, encountering and surmounting a series of challenges in its successful path towards recognition as a fully legitimate and respected branch of political theory. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of political ideologies, political theory, political philosophy and more broadly to sociology, political science, anthropology, human geography, international studies and the humanities.

What is pragmatism? Is it a means to an end, or an end in itself? Is it antithetical to ideology or morality? Arguing that pragmatism is a skill much more than an attribute, Phua examines how viewing it in this way can help achieve better foreign policy outcomes. He examines and contrasts the ways in which the United States, China and Singapore have incorporated pragmatism into their approaches to foreign policy. In doing so he debunks dualistic myths around pragmatism and ideology and promotes the view of pragmatism as a skill that can be developed. An essential primer for students, analysts and policymakers, with a fresh and practical approach to pragmatism.

Richard Nixon's election to the presidency in 1968 was an improbable vindication for a man branded as a loser after unsuccessful presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Yet during the 1966 mid-term elections, he emerged as the critical figure who united the fractured Republican Party after the disastrous 1964 presidential election. Along the way, he sensed how large swaths of the American public were moving against the Democrats, and how a candidate could take advantage of this. Filling an important gap in the Nixon literature, this book explores his dynamic reinvention during the dark days of the mid-sixties-a period that mirrored his 1946-1952 rise from obscure congressman to Eisenhower's vice-president. Beginning with his 1962 press conference after losing the California governor's election and ending with his 1968 presidential victory, a far more human Nixon is revealed, unlike the familiar caricature of the shady politician and orchestrator of Watergate who would do anything to win.

Impressive range of interdisciplinary scholars. Offers an original and innovative approach to IR by connecting it to civilisation studies. Timely material which should have a long shelf-life.

This book traces the factors that contributed to the success in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea and identifies the concept of familism as a major environmental factor. The government of South Korea has achieved remarkable outcomes in its COVID-19 response, despite the fact that South Korea usually promotes a family-focused investment of resources at the expense of broader social goals. The author eschews these western cultural biases in theories of crisis management and suggests that the key component of South Korea's success is not self-centered egotism of individuals but a focus on family and familism, which projects state as an extension of family. He argues that while the success in managing the COVID-19 epidemic is due to a combination of factors, familism has been a key force in driving this successful response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of governance, crisis management, civil society, and citizen's participation in public administration, international relations, Asian studies, and cultural studies and Confucianism.

This book argues that the recent political mobilizations in Eastern Europe have been underpinned by a class struggle between a more conservative and a more radical line of contention. The latter line, the book contends, is designed by and for subaltern groups whose anti-systemic programme calls for not just the eradication of corruption, but for more participatory forms of democracy, for social justice, and for freedom from want. The former, on the other hand, is designed by powerful groups of intellectuals, for the middle classes whom the intellectuals see as the historical strata capable of advancing the 'catch-up' projects of modernization and Europeanization which they zealously champion. Based on a critical examination of recent political struggles, including a detailed case study of the 2013 protests in Bulgaria which focuses particularly on their internal antagonisms and drawing on the social theories of Antonio Gramsci and Ernst Bloch, the book provides shrewd insights into class antagonisms in political mobilizations, the distortive nature of ideological constructions and utopian longings, and the factors which propel many people to support projects for social change.

First published in 1985, The Place of Ideology in Political Life explores the concept of 'ideology' in terms of its philosophical and intellectual underpinnings. Ideology is a term much bandied about by politicians and political thinkers with very little precision employed in its use. Despite acknowledgement in the literature of political studies that ideology plays a part in political life, there exist no precise accounts of the nature of that contribution. This book attempts to take a step towards redressing the balance by determining the sense in which ideology constitutes a genuine form of understanding human relationships and the place understanding has in all political activity regardless of whether or not any particular ideology is to be approved or condemned. This concise work will be invaluable to all students of politics, philosophy of action, ethics, and history of political thought.

Spain has become a remarkable democratic laboratory in which millions of citizens are experimenting with new forms of political expression. This book examines the dynamics of this political laboratory, showing that the upheavals it is experiencing are likely in the near future to affect democracies elsewhere in the world. Examining the new means of participation that were established in fields where digital communication tools enabled the launch of novel dynamics of political action, the reader will gain access to a comprehensive analysis of the reshaping and mutation process that has affected fields such as activism, political parties and political participation. Using a case study of the Spain between 2011 and 2015, the book focuses on the changes that have taken place in politics and communication in Spain, paying particular attention to the 15M movement and its disruptive, innovative strength in all matters related to politics and communication. The chapters cover political repertoires and the hybridization of horizontal and vertical political logics; the appearance of new political parties; the establishment of monitoring mechanisms as an essential means of political expression and participation; and the subversion of rationality across media as a product of the communication strategies implemented by online political activism. Showing that Spain is not just at the forefront of democratic innovation, but that it is a political laboratory in which trials are taking place that tell us much about the future of democracy everywhere, this book will be of great use to scholars of political theory, democracy and philosophy.

This book investigates whether politics in Britain in the twenty-first century is driven more by issues of culture and identity than by "left versus right" issues of wealth distribution. Drawing from a number of opinion surveys, it explores the shifting positions of voters on both economic matters and matters of culture and identity. It finds that between 2015 and 2017 support for Britain's main political parties became much more predicated on issues of culture and identity, reflecting a radical change in how parties attract voters. In the longer-term, it suggests that issues of culture and identity have become more salient overall, possibly because of the oft-cited divide between winners and losers of globalisation. The book ends by speculating on why politics has become more polarised on these issues, rather than on the economic fallout of globalisation, and suggests that an explanation is to be found in changing forms of political communication between voters and politicians.

In this book, the author argues that the standard Marxist conceptions of the relations of nature to value, of humans to nature, and of history to time, are no longer tenable. He contends that the centrality of cultural categories, as raised by the feminist, art, and ecology movements, amongst others, is one crucial difference for the late industrial world, demanding a break from the dominant tendencies within Marxism to reduce causality to its economic factor. The book offers an approach towards a new way of thinking about these problems, and this edition has been revised to incorporate new material.

The book assesses the development of the Orban regime in Hungary after 2010 through analyzing the polity-politics-policy impacts from a perspective of populism as an ideology focusing on discourse and actual decisions. By closely scrutinizing political narratives, actual decisions and survey data, this volume offers a systematic analysis of the impact of populism on the polity-politics-policy aspects of the political in Hungary after 2010. It analyzes the uses of constitutionalism and discriminatory legalism, the changes in the quality of democracy, the government's relationship with media and journalism, its influence over the party system and EU politics, and its approach to family and cultural policies. While each chapter in the volume describes the findings in response to the corresponding literature highlighting the added value of the individual analyses, the book interprets the overall results under the notion of "smart populism" where the moral definition of "the people" allows for little political opposition, "the elite" is selected based on its multifaceted applicability for a political narrative and "the will of the people" is determined from above. The volume also suggests responses to "smart populism". The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of democracy, party politics the rise of populism and contemporary Hungarian politics.

Compare any two political maps, one from the early twentieth century and one from the present, and you will notice that the world now contains more democracies than it used to. How and why did democracy spread around the world? How do we recognize democracies when we see them? And what does the future of democracy look like? This book shows you how to define and measure democracy, and to identify what democracies have in common. It evaluates important recent trends in democratization and the challenges that face it including: - Democratic decay - Populism, authoritarianism and the far right - Threats posed by global terrorism and sectarian violence - The rise of 'illiberal democracies' - Declining civic participation. Analysing economic development, education, industrialization and other factors, Democratization shows you the internal political, economic and social conditions that help or hinder democratization. Looking at globalization, political aid, military intervention and the 'neighbourhood'-effect, it also explains how external factors put pressure on democratic reform. Covering key theories, such as modernization and democratic peace theory, and with case studies from Indonesia to the Zapatista movement, this is the ideal text for those studying democratization for the first time.

Security relations between Japan and its East Asia neighbors have been complicated for decades. Entering the third decade of the 21st century, Japan will have to face new security challenges posed by COVID-19 and manage its current relations with the United States, China and South Korea. Mitigating local and global security threats will be one of the most critical challenges for the future. This book focuses on internal and external factors that are influencing current Japanese security policy and analyses the security issues from numerous perspectives, including social issues and their effect on security policies, bilateral relations between Japan and its partners in Asia, and the significance of the U.S.-Japan Alliance.

This book offers an original and comprehensive formulation of a new ideology critique for political analysis. Going beyond the reiterative attempts of declaring the 'death of ideology', the book - after revisiting the main developments of the theory of ideology - presents a productive critique of Habermas's theory of communicative action viewed through Slavoj Zižek's theory of ideology. Far from assuming their theories are incommensurable, the book argues that it is worth observing Zižek's theoretical endeavor as a 'supplementary' overcoming of Habermas's proposal. This will eventually show that by using a fictional notion of the Real taken from a Zižekian reading of Lacan, a new ideology critique, which affirms a universal truth for a political situation, becomes possible. This new model of ideology critique is applied to the political consensus reached in Chile's post-Pinochet.

This comprehensive handbook examines relationships between religion, politics and ideology, with a focus on several world religions - Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism - in a variety of contexts, regions and countries. Relationships between religion, politics and ideology help mould people's attitudes about the way that political systems, both domestically and internationally, are organised and operate. While conceptually separate, religion, politics and ideology often become intertwined and as a result their relationships evolve over time. This volume brings together a number of expert contributors who explore a wide range of topical and controversial issues, including gender, nationalism, communism, fascism, populism and Islamism. Such topics inform the overall aim of the handbook: to provide a comprehensive summary of the relationships between religion, politics and ideology, including basic issues and new approaches. This handbook is a major research resource for students, researchers and professionals from various disciplinary backgrounds, including religious studies, political science, international relations, and sociology.

1) This is a comprehensive book presenting the political thoughts of prominent Indian thinkers like Ambedkar, Nehru, Gandhi, Lohia etc. 2) Written by experts in the field it discusses concepts like nationalism, secularism, social and gender justice etc. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of South Asian studies across UK and USA.

Over the last four decades, Dipesh Chakrabarty's astonishingly wide-ranging scholarship has elaborated a range of important issues, especially those of modernity, identity, and politics - in dialogue with postcolonial theory and critical historiography - on global and planetary scales. All of this makes Chakrabarty among the most significant (and most cited) scholars working in the humanities and social sciences today. The present text comprises substantive yet short, academic yet accessible essays that are crafted in conversation with the critical questions raised by Chakrabarty's writings. Now, Chakrabarty holds the singular distinction of making key contributions to some of the most salient shifts in understandings of the Global South that have come about in wake of subaltern studies and postcolonial perspectives, critiques of Eurocentrism together with elaborations of public pasts, and articulations of climatic histories alongside problems of the Anthropocene. Rather than exegeses and commentaries, these original, commissioned, pieces - written by a stellar cast of contributors from four continents - imaginatively engage Chakrabarty's insights and arguments, in order to incisively explore important issues of the politics of knowledge in contemporary worlds. This book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students interested in a wide variety of interdisciplinary issues across the humanities and social sciences, especially the interplay between postcolonial perspectives and subaltern studies, between man-made climate change and the human sciences, between history and theory, and between modernity and globalization.

This book analyses Brexit in the larger context of the crisis in liberal democracies and the continuing rise of 'nationalism'. With electoral verdicts favouring right-wing populists across the world, the volume argues that Brexit has become a key event in understanding global political currents, as well as emerging as a watershed moment in the current political climate. The author focuses on the underlying currents that shaped the Brexit vote and delineates the various strands of arguments that inform the current political climate. The volume also locates the deepening divide within the discourse and understanding of democracy, as well the abysmally low level of rhetoric informing the debates around it. Further, it links this up with other 'nationalist' waves across the world, including South Asia. A nuanced reading of a key event, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, especially political theory, political sociology and history.

Ernst Bloch is perhaps best known for his subtle and imaginative investigation of utopias and utopianism, but his work also provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of western culture, politics and society. Yet, because he has not been one of easiest of writers to read his full contribution has not been widely acknowledged. Block developed a complex conceptual framework, and presented this in a prose style which many have found to verge on the impenetrable.
In this critical and accessible introduction to one of the most fascinating thinkers of the twentieth century, Vincent Geoghegan unravels much of the mystery of the man and his ideas.

Hasan al-Turabi (1932-2016) was born into a Sudanese family with a clerical and Sufi history. Whilst studying law at the University of Khartoum, he became a leader of the Islamic student movement. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of London, he achieved a PhD at the University of Sorbonne in 1964. Upon returning to Sudan to pursue an academic career at the University of Khartoum, he soon became one of the leaders of the Islamic National Front. After being imprisoned for nearly seven years, he went on to hold numerous government posts, culminating in his most influential period during the rule of 'Umar al-Bashir. He ultimately fell out of favour with the government, and faced trials and imprisonment. The Political Thought of Hasan al-Turabi identifies Turabi as arguably the leading Sudanese Islamic political thinker and activist of recent times, and sets out the main influences upon Turabi's thought. Yet it is demonstrated that Turabi was an original thinker, who digested but then adapted the thought of his predecessors. Whilst his political goal was to politically unite the Islamic world, he also strove to improve relations with the non-Muslim world. Furthermore, his political thought sought to unite the Muslims and non-Muslims of Sudan in a peaceful unity, whilst working to raise the status of the poor and women.

This handbook provides a unique opportunity to bring together several different strings of debates, especially useful to the growing focus on responsibility which increasingly demands interdisciplinary approaches. It focuses on practices and normativity in ways that are often overlooked by a focus on accountability. It highlights the contested meaning of responsibility. In addition to its academic purpose, it may also prove of interest to policy-makers, think tanks, policy research institutes.

Eric Voegelin's Political Readings fills a critical void by providing an original approach to studying the work of Eric Voegelin, one of the major political philosophers of the twenty-first century. Across six chapters, experts guide the reader from classical to modern times presenting six political philosophers who have had an impact on the life and philosophical production of Eric Voegelin. Philosophers examined include Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Hobbes, Weber and Kelsen. Through this innovative structure, the chapters collectively illustrate how Voegelin was an exceptional thinker through his engagement with political philosophers both modern and antique. The plurality of unique, academic perspectives and voices enriches our understanding of Voegelin's own thought while also encouraging a re-think of ancient and modern thinkers, and the transformation and continuity between these. Designed for students and scholars alike, Eric Voegelin's Political Readings will appeal to all those with an interest in Voegelin as well as readers familiar with classical and modern political philosophers.

"To Be Unfree" is a collection of essays investigating how political unfreedom has been and can be articulated within the republican tradition of political thought. The book combines a theoretical discussion of how freedom and its opposites have been conceptualized in the republican tradition with a broader perspective on this tradition's impact on the representation of unfreedom in Western literature and cultural history. It thus complicates our understanding of what it means to be unfree, and unveils a series of distinctions which also shape our modern notions of freedom.