Political sociology has struggled with predicting the next turn of transformation in the MENA countries after the 2011 Uprisings. Arab activists did not articulate explicitly any modalities of their desired system, although their slogans ushered to a fully-democratic society. These unguided Uprisings showcase an open-ended freedom-to question after Arabs underwent their freedom-from struggle from authoritarianism. The new conflicts in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya have fragmented shar'iya (legitimacy) into distinct conceptualizations: "revolutionary legitimacy," "electoral legitimacy," "legitimacy of the street," and "consensual legitimacy." This volume examines whether the Uprisings would introduce a replica of the European Enlightenment or rather stimulate an Arab/Islamic awakening with its own cultural specificity and political philosophy. By placing Immanuel Kant in Tahrir Square, this book adopts a comparative analysis of two enlightenment projects: one Arab, still under construction, with possible progression toward modernity or regression toward neo-authoritarianism, and one European, shaped by the past two centuries. Mohammed D. Cherkaoui and the contributing authors use a hybrid theoretical framework drawing on three tanwiri (enlightenment) philosophers from different eras: Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroes (the twelfth century), Immanuel Kant (the eighteenth century), and Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri (the twentieth century). The authors propose a few projections about the outcome of the competition between an Islamocracy vision and what Cherkaoui terms as a Demoslamic vision, since it implies the Islamist movements' flexibility to reconcile their religious absolutism with the prerequisites of liberal democracy. This book also traces the patterns of change which point to a possible Arab Axial Age. It ends with the trials of modernity and tradition in Tunisia and an imaginary speech Kant would deliver at the Tunisian Parliament after those vibrant debates of the new constitution in 2014.

The new biography of President-elect Joe Biden by National Book Award winner and New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest – fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses that he has suffered. Yet even as Biden's life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors and reversals of fortune. His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship – an essential quality as he addresses a nation at its most dire hour in decades.

Blending up-close journalism and broader context, Evan Osnos illuminates Biden's life and captures the characters and meaning of an extraordinary presidential election. He draws on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of progressive activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members.

In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy – a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.

In this volume, scholars from the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union trace the rise of new national movements in the Soviet Union and the political implications of the changing relationships between the subjects of the federation. The authors offer new arguments concerning the link between political structure and nationalism, finding that Soviet policies designed to eliminate national distinctiveness frequently had the unintended result of creating new national identities. With the adoption of perestroika and glasnost, such identities have become a potent political force, impelling the Soviet Union to grapple with the contradictions between regional sovereignty and territorial integrity. The contributors also show how, in the course of this struggle, the international system has often played a critical role. It has helped shape the aspirations of non-Russian nationalist movements, which often seek integration within the world even as they pursue independence from traditional imperialist orientations, adopting a more isolationist stance centered on the creation of a specifically Russian state.

This text is a historical sociological examination of the formulation and institutionalization of Turkish nationhood during the early Republic (1920-1938). Focusing on the language, education, and citizenship policies advanced during the period, it looks at how the Republican elite situated different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.

Originally published in 1992, this book is about political culture. It examines developments in the social sciences and integrates them into a theoretical explanation of historical changes in political values. The starting point is the premise that political culture is rooted in the interaction between individual thinking and social norms. Through discourse, individual conceptions of social life are transformed and, interactively, social norms and cultural orientations as well. The first two parts of the book explore these issues theoretically. The second two examine them empirically by showing the ways that political cultures have changed over time. In the modern period the differences in the political cultures of capitalist and communist systems are contrasted; although both coneptualize social life in terms of property accumulation, they utilize different cultural orientations to reduce institutional transaction costs. The way the tensions between these two systems can be resolved is also explored.

During the revolution in Iran, a small, fanatical group called the Forqan used targeted assassinations of religious leaders to fight the Ayatollah Khomeini's plan to establish a theocratic Islamic state. Ronen A. Cohen examines what really happened behind the fog of revolution.

The collective work deals with the problems of if, how, and why the histories of German Nazism and Soviet Communism should and could be situated within one coherent narrative. As historical phenomena, can Communism and Nazism fruitfully be compared to each other? Do they belong to the same historical contexts? Have they influenced, reacted to or learned from each other? Are they interpreted, represented and used together by posterity? The background of the book is twofold. One is external. There is an ongoing debate about the historical entanglements of Communism and Nazism, especially about Auschwitz and Gulag, respectively. Our present fascination with the evil history of genocide has situated the Holocaust as the borderline event in Western historical thinking. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet Communist regime do not have the same position but are considered more urgent in the East and Central European states that were subdued by both Nazi and Communist regimes. The other, internal background is to develop an analytical perspective in which the "comnaz" nexus can be understood. Using a complex approach, the authors investigate Communist and Nazi histories as entangled phenomena, guided by three basic perspectives. Focusing on roots and developments, a genetic perspective highlights historical, process-oriented connections. A structural perspective indicates an attempt to narrow down "operational" parallels of the two political systems in the way they handled ideology to construct social utopia, used techniques of terror, etc. A third perspective is genealogical, emphasizing the processing and use of Communist and Nazi history by posterity in terms of meaning and memory: What past is worth remembering, celebrating, debating-but also distorting and forgetting? The chapters of the book address phenomena such as ideology, terror, secular religion, museum exhibits, and denial.

Why has Japan found it easier than the United States to pursue a consistent industrial policy? Why does Britain provide health care collectively whereas France relies on private provision? Why is the American government unable to ensure the safety of its citizens whereas personal safety is not even an issue in Japan? Such questions are central to the study of comparative public politics and this textbook, first published in 1992, seeks to answer them by integrating policy analysis with mainstream comparative politics. The authors examine power and policy in four liberal democracies: France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. They provide an introduction to the politics of these four leading democracies, setting out the actors, arenas and agendas of policy in each country. The following sections explore four contrasting areas of policy: industrial, health, ethnic minorities and law and order. In the final part these countries and sectors are discussed from the perspectives of policy implementation, evaluation and comparison.

The authors argue that the potential threat of a resurgence of "fascism" has been consistently exaggerated from 1945 until present day; that the ongoing lack of conceptual and definitional clarity with respect to terms like "fascism," the "radical right," the "alt right," "white supremacism," "populism," "racism," etc., has enabled ill-informed or dishonest commentators to distort their meaning and abusively misapply those labels so as to delegitimize their political opponents-that the political and economic elites in charge of contemporary Western societies are now deliberately exaggerating and exploiting the threat posed by the domestic radical right in order to facilitate vilifying, harassing, de-platforming, censoring, "canceling," and repressing disgruntled citizens (no matter where they may lie along the political spectrum) who openly criticize and vigorously oppose their agendas. They also advocate the use of well-established scholarly methods for carrying out research on the right and provide precise definitions of various terms in order to facilitate the development of more accurate categorizations.

The third edition of Democratic Latin America retains its classic institutional approach to understand contemporary Latin American politics. Each chapter focuses on a different institution and compares how they are constructed differently across countries. Placing a premium on accessibility, the chapters open with a story and end with a detailed country case study, making use of contemporary examples to feed student interest in current events, with comparison-based tables and box features interspersed throughout to stimulate analysis. Every chapter finishes with a set of questions and recommended readings. This approach allows for a very practical approach to politics that encourages critical analysis. Updates to this new edition include: updated comparison-based tables and box features to stimulate analysis; new "Country in the Spotlight" to include developments unique to each country; and discussions on political change in Cuba, indigenous peoples and political power, neopopulism, impeachment procedures, transitional justice, the 2019 protests, the new militarism, the mobilization of women against violence, LGBT rights, the evangelical movement, and the Colombian peace process. A clear-eyed look at political institutions to provide a roadmap to the political activity in a country, Democratic Latin America continues to offer an original way of teaching and learning about Latin American politics.

The third edition of Democratic Latin America retains its classic institutional approach to understand contemporary Latin American politics. Each chapter focuses on a different institution and compares how they are constructed differently across countries. Placing a premium on accessibility, the chapters open with a story and end with a detailed country case study, making use of contemporary examples to feed student interest in current events, with comparison-based tables and box features interspersed throughout to stimulate analysis. Every chapter finishes with a set of questions and recommended readings. This approach allows for a very practical approach to politics that encourages critical analysis. Updates to this new edition include: updated comparison-based tables and box features to stimulate analysis; new "Country in the Spotlight" to include developments unique to each country; and discussions on political change in Cuba, indigenous peoples and political power, neopopulism, impeachment procedures, transitional justice, the 2019 protests, the new militarism, the mobilization of women against violence, LGBT rights, the evangelical movement, and the Colombian peace process. A clear-eyed look at political institutions to provide a roadmap to the political activity in a country, Democratic Latin America continues to offer an original way of teaching and learning about Latin American politics.

Zionism in Arab discourses presents a ground-breaking study of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Through analyses of hundreds of texts written by Arab Islamists and liberals from the late-nineteenth century to the 'Arab Spring', the book demonstrates that the Zionist enterprise has played a dual function of an enemy and a mentor. Islamists and liberals alike discovered, respectively, in Zionism and in Israeli society qualities they sought to implement in their sown homelands. Focusing on Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian political discourses, this study uncovers fascinating and unexpected Arab points of views on different aspects of Zionism; from the first Zionist Congress to the First Lebanon War; from gardening in the early years of Tel Aviv to women's service in the Israeli Defence Forces; from the role of religion in the creation of the state to the role of democracy in its preservation. -- .

Winner of the 2016 Association for Asian American Studies Award for Best Book in Cultural Studies The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America addresses this central question: if race has been settled as a legal or social construction and not as biological fact, why do Asian American artists, authors, and performers continue to scrutinize their body parts? Engaging novels, poetry, theater, and new media from both the U.S. and internationally-such as Kazuo Ishiguro's science fiction novel Never Let Me Go or Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats and exhibits like that of Body Worlds in which many of the bodies on display originated from Chinese prisons-Rachel C. Lee teases out the preoccupation with human fragments and posthuman ecologies in the context of Asian American cultural production and theory. She unpacks how the designation of "Asian American" itself is a mental construct that is paradoxically linked to the biological body. Through chapters that each use a body part as springboard for reading Asian American texts, Lee inaugurates a new avenue of research on biosociality and biopolitics within Asian American criticism, focused on the literary and cultural understandings of pastoral governmentality, the divergent scales of embodiment, and the queer (cross)species being of racial subjects. She establishes an intellectual alliance and methodological synergy between Asian American studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS), biocultures, medical humanities, and femiqueer approaches to family formation, carework, affect, and ethics. In pursuing an Asian Americanist critique concerned with speculative and real changes to human biologies, she both produces innovation within the field and demonstrates the urgency of that critique to other disciplines.

Reissuing the epic undertaking of Dr S. Maccoby, these volumes cover the story of English Radicalism from its origins right through to its questionable end. By combining new sources with the old and often long forgotten, the volumes provide an impressive history of radicalism and shed light on the course of English political development. The six volumes are arranged chronologically from 1762 through to the perceived end of British Radicalism in the mid-twentieth century.

Gathering together essays by some of the most influential modern political philosophers and theorists, War, Peace, and International Political Realism reveals the twentieth-century roots of the realist tradition and demonstrates the enduring relevance of realist insights for current international relations scholarship and foreign affairs. These essays, all of which were published in The Review of Politics, the majority during the 1940s and 1950s, reflect four major tenets of the classical realist tradition: an obligation to confront large and difficult questions about international politics, a recognition of the fundamentally tragic nature of relations among humans and states, a rejection of historical optimism, and a belief in practical morality. Keir A. Lieber provides an excellent introduction emphasizing the importance of political realism as defined by the contributors. Students and scholars of political theory, international relations, and history will welcome having these important essays in one useful volume; they are just as applicable to contemporary foreign policy challenges as they were to the crises of post-World War II international politics.

This book is a social critique of the cultural taboo of the female virginity in the Middle East. It highlights the unobtainability of this cultural myth and its multilevel destructive influences on various aspects of social life.

A generation of young Christians are weary of the political legacy they've inherited and hungry for a better approach. They're tired of seeing their faith tied to political battles they didn't start, and they're frustrated by the failures of leaders they thought they could trust. Kaitlyn Schiess grew up in this landscape, and understands it from the inside. Spiritual formation, and particularly a focus on formative practices, are experiencing a renaissance in Christian thinking-but these ideas are not often applied to the political sphere. In The Liturgy of Politics, Schiess shows that the church's politics are shaped by its habits and practices even when it's unaware of them. Schiess insists that the way out of our political morass is first to recognize the formative power of the political forces all around us, and then to recover historic Christian practices that shape us according to the truth of the gospel.

"Territory, Democracy and Justice" brings together experts from six countries to ask what territorial decentralization does and what it means for democracy, policymaking and the welfare state. Integrated and international in a fragmented field, the chapters identify the importance and consequences of territorial decentralization. The authors analyze the successes, the generalizable ideas, and the international lessons in the study of comparative territorial politics as well as new directions for research.

The book aims to answer the central question: "What went wrong, more precisely, in the decision chain during the reconstruction of Iraq's military institution?" The holistic character of the approach is ensured through a series of background analyses. Although most researches concluded already that Iraq's reconstruction was a failure, answering the question implied the design of an appropriate research method and data collection/analysis, in order to frame particular characteristics of the reconstruction process. Despite the complexity of the topic and theoretical Security Sector Reform principles, which can hardly be applied to Iraq's case, the thesis emphasizes on actors involved, their actions and connections between events, as part of a unique process.

Despite its prominence in public discourse, the notion of elites remains a highly contested and ambiguous part of modern political discourse. This monograph rehabilitates the idea of elites and gives it a solid theoretical footing, while relating it with the historical development of liberal thought in the west. The analysis offered in the book concentrates on the tradition of liberal political thought in France, which has consistently tackled the question of the elites, their role in society, and the process of their formation. Combining theoretical insights with practical wisdom, French liberal thinkers have seen the elite as an indispensable social category and as a vehicle for the development of human liberty. In their different prescriptive doctrines, French liberal thinkers have sought to reconcile the emergence of social elites with the requirements of social and political equality, as well as with the ongoing modernization of mores and institutions. The monograph offers a unique contribution to scholarship in modern political thought by engaging analytically with the notion of elites, as well as by offering a structured discussion on the historical development of liberalism in France.

This book provides an historical overview of the Japanese Communist Party from its foundation to the present. It outlines the development of the party, explores its stance on key issues and discusses how the party has set a high moral tone, avoiding compromising coalitions with other parties, being intolerant of corruption within its own ranks, and frequently and consistently opposing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The book also considers the internal nature of the party, which continues to have a mass membership, and which in recent years has softened its former somewhat rigid approach. The book emphasizes the importance for Japan of this moral approach as the conscience of the nation, especially as the present Abe government moves Japan to the right, even though the Japanese Communist Party has never gained power and is never likely to.

During the European elections of 2014, one of the main issues raised by the media was the electoral performance of so called 'populist parties'. The electorate confirmed its deep dissatisfaction with mainstream political parties, voting for far right parties in parliamentary elections in Northern Europe (Austria, Denmark, Sweden), Eastern Europe (Hungary, where the deeply anti-Semitic Jobbik party gained votes) and in France (where the French National Front won about a quarter of the vote), while in the Southern European countries, battered by austerity policies, it was the radical right and left in Greece (Golden Dawn and Syriza) and the radical left in Spain (Podemos) that obtained excellent scores. This book examines the growing trend towards far and extreme right populism that has emerged prominently in Northern (Finland), Western (Austria, Denmark, France, the UK), Southern (Greece, Italy) and Central/Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Bulgaria) since the 1990s. Providing a critical understanding of current European trends and analysing the complex phenomena covered by the notion of populism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching right-wing politics, as well as European politics more generally.

This book discusses right-wing extremism by analysing Germanophone research on this topic for the first time in English, including unique survey data from Germany and Austria. Highlighting how questions of terminology can become complicated when country cases are compared, the authors analyse theoretical and methodological issues in relation to the question of right-wing extremism. In Anglo-American academia, the term is often associated with fairly rare phenomena in the form of extremist political groups, whereas in Germany the term is often applied to a wide range of attitudes, behaviours and parties, including those which operate more within the mainstream political sphere. Covering an array of sub-fields such as right-wing terrorism, iconography of the extreme right and the Germanophone discussion on the differentiation of right-wing populism and right-wing extremism, the authors account not only for the centrality of right-wing extremist attitudes in Germanophone research, but also point at its often overlooked relevance for the phenomenon in general. Offering an important insight into the nuanced definition of right-wing extremism across Europe and enhancing both international debate and cross-country comparative research, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching extremism, German politics and European politics more generally.

Why do some individuals from the imagined "non-West" view the "West" favorably and others do not? Grounded in psychological authoritarianism and the psychological reactions to experiences of rejection, Bjoern Goldstein provides a theoretical model to explain and predict attitude toward the "West." Using accounts from high-ranking politicians from different socioeconomic groups in the Tamil Nadu region of India-a region independent from the often too "emotionalized" discourse regarding (political) Islam-Goldstein challenges the conventional narrative that the most important factors for attitude formation toward the West are experiences of disregard and oppression perpetrated by the West. Far beyond the personal characteristics of individuals, differences in attitudes follow a regular pattern of variables influencing opinion and attitude formation toward the West in each society. Scoring high on authoritarianism predicts "anti-Western" attitudes far better than socio-economic status, cultural or moral concerns, or normative differences do.