Should we punish wrongdoers? Should we take care of the ones who suffered from wrongdoings? Although we may believe answers to these questions are obvious, they become less so when similar questions are asked under exceptional circumstances, such as armed conflicts. These answers may decide about the continuation of hostilities or their end. The stakes are high, while we can hardly ignore the need to deal with the consequences of violence generated by a conflict. This book discusses the dilemmas and challenges associated with the provision of justice in the context of the armed conflict in Ukrainian Donbas in 2014–2019.

The Dragon's Hidden Wings is the first comprehensive study on China's use of soft power. Sheng Ding provides the reader with an insightful empirical study that details China's economic and political rise on the global scene over the course of the last three decades. This book not only endeavors to examine the connections between the ongoing rise of China and what Joseph Nye defines as soft power, but also attempts to give readers a more complete understanding of China's national power and modernization process. The main questions addressed are: What are the theoretical and empirical connections between the soft power concept and the rise of China? What are China's own soft power resources? How has Beijing used soft power to become a major player in the world? What opportunities and challenges does the use of soft power present to China? This study is essential reading for scholars of Chinese politics and foreign policy, and for scholars of international relation interested in the concept and application of soft power.

In this critical work on the political thought of Leo Strauss, Sean Noah Walsh addresses Leo Strauss's claims about esotericism in the philosophic texts of Plato. He challenges Strauss's understanding of esoteric writing as an attempt by Plato to secretly encode the highest truths "exclusively between the lines" in order to avoid persecution. Indeed, through the character of Socrates, the speaker with whom Plato is inextricably associated, Walsh asserts that Plato's exoteric writings were sufficiently incendiary and provocative to demonstrate that a fear of persecution was not his highest priority. The politics that follow from Strauss's thought depend on the interpretation of these Platonic philosophical bases and by analyzing how the problem of fear has been confronted in the works of Plato and Leo Strauss, Walsh offers a direct and thorough account of the politics that emerge from Strauss's esoteric reading of political philosophy. Applying Lacanian psychoanalysis, Walsh investigates the discourse of Straussian esotericism. and examines Plato's writing for examples of exoteric risk, subjecting both Plato and Strauss's writings to Lacan's psychoanalytic technique for interpreting the function of desire in discourse. Given the continuing influence of Strauss's ideas on contemporary politics, particularly within American foreign policy, Walsh's examination of this Straussian esotericism for these effects will prove an interesting read for political theorists, international relations scholars, and philosophers alike.

Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl's recent book Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Penn State University Press, 2005) is being received in philosophy and political theory as an important and original defense of liberalism. The book offers a neo-Aristotelian ethic of human flourishing as a basis for a liberal conception of human rights. One of the authors' central contentions is that a key problem for any (liberal) political philosophy is how to establish a political/legal order which in principle does not require that any one person or group's well-being be given structured preference over that of any other. This companion volume, an interpretive and critical reader, features essays from both philosophers and political scientists, as well as an omnibus reply by Rasmussen and Den Uyl. Norms of Liberty makes challenging arguments about key issues, which makes a multi-disciplinary reader a valuable asset for both students and scholars. Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl is designed both to explicate the book's arguments and to explore possible objections.

The Poetics of Fear looks at how fear is used for political purposes, focusing on the binary logic ofthis is the way things are, and there is nothing (else) you can do about it a logic that underlies the realist tradition in international relations theory. The Shield of Achilles from Homer's is used as metaphorical analysis to look at what the politics of fear is, how it works, and how it can be resisted. It aims to provide a human response to human security matters. The work first shows how the Shield works to paralyze its audience. How can it be resisted? One response is to offer a warning about the hazards of bearing the Shield. After looking at thinkers such as Plato, Baudrillard, and Nietzsche, the work concludes with an examination of ekphrasis as a critical tool.With a unique and fresh perspective, The Poetics of Fear will be relevant to those interested in security studies and critical theoretical approaches to political science.

This innovative new book argues that diplomacy, which emerged out of the French Revolution, has become one of the central Ideological State Apparatuses of the modern democratic nation-state. The book is divided into four thematic parts. The first presents the central concepts and theoretical perspectives derived from the work of Slavoj Zizek, focusing on his understanding of politics, ideology, and the core of the conceptual apparatus of Lacanian psychoanalysis. There then follow three parts treating diplomacy as archi-politics, ultra-politics, and post-politics, respectively highlighting three eras of the modern history of diplomacy from the French Revolution until today. The first part takes on the question of the creation of the term 'diplomacy', which took place during the time of the French Revolution. The second part begins with the effects on diplomacy arising from the horrors of the two World Wars. Finally, the third part covers another major shift in Western diplomacy during the last century, the fall of the Soviet Union, and how this transformation shows itself in the field of Diplomacy Studies. The book argues that diplomacy's primary task is not to be understood as negotiating peace between warring parties, but rather to reproduce the myth of the state's unity by repressing its fundamental inconsistencies. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, political theory, philosophy, and International Relations.

This work explains elite behaviour in authoritarian systems and proposes why elites withdraw their support for the incumbent when faced with popular uprisings. Building upon foundations drawn from institutional authoritarianism and synthesised with local context from the substantial scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa, the book argues that the elite supporting autocrats come from three distinct cadres: the military, the single-party and the personalist. Each of these cadres possesses its own distinct institutional interests and preferences towards regime change. Drawing on these interests, the study constructs a theoretical framework that is assessed through testing it against three variables. Utilising an analytic narrative, the research finds that the withdrawal of elite support is the consequence of long-term processes that see distinct cadres marginalised. First, increased incumbent preference for personalist elements destabilises regimes as the military and single-party cadres reconsider their positions. Second, neoliberal economic policies, implemented via structural adjustment, accelerated this personalisation as the state's withdrawal from the economy. This, in turn, affected the ability of the military and single-party elites to access patronage. Finally, the degree of military involvement in the formal political sphere contributes to shaping the nature of the system that replaced the incumbent regime under examination. Building upon a wide range of literature the book argues that interest realisation determines whether or not elite actors support regime change in authoritarian systems. The volume will be of interest to scholars researching politics, social sciences and the Middle East.

It's not just the bully in the schoolyard that we should be worried about. The one-on-one bullying that dominates the national conversation, this timely book suggests, is actually part of a larger problem- a natural outcome of the bullying nature of our national institutions. And as long as the United States embraces militarism and aggressive capitalism, systemic bullying and all its impacts-at home and abroad-will persist as a major crisis. Bullying looks very similar on the personal and institutional levels: it involves an imbalance of power and behavior that consistently undermines its victim, securing compliance and submission and reinforcing the bully's sense of superiority and legitimacy. The similarity, this book tells us, is not a coincidence. Authors Charles Derber and Yale Magrass argue that individual bullying is an outgrowth-and a necessary function-of a larger social phenomenon.Bullying is seen here as a structural problem arising from systems organized around steep power hierarchies-from the halls of the Pentagon, Congress, and corporate offices to classrooms and playing fields and the environment. Dominant people and institutions need to create a culture in which violence and aggression are seen asnatural and just: one where individuals compete over who will be bully or victim, and each is seen as deserving their fatewithin this hierarchy. The larger the inequalities of power in society, or among nations, or even across species, the morelikely it is that both institutional and personal bullying will become commonplace. The authors see the life-long psychologicalscars interpersonal bullying can bring, but believe it is almost impossible to reduce such bullying without first challenging theinstitutions that breed and encourage it. In the United States a system of intertwined corporations, governments, and military institutions carries out "systemic bullying" to create profits and sustain its own power. While acknowledging the diversity and savagery of many other bully nations, the authors contend that America, as the most powerful nation in the world-and one that aggressively promotes its system as a model-merits special attention. It is only by recognizing the bullying built into this model that we can address the real problem, and in this, Bully Nation makes a hopeful beginning.

To shed light on the global reassertion of authoritarianism in recent years, this volume analyses transnational diffusion and international cooperation among non-democratic regimes. How and with what effect do authoritarian regimes learn from each other? For what purpose and how successfully do they cooperate? The volume highlights that present-day autocrats pursue mainly pragmatic interests, rather than ideological missions. Consequently, the connections among authoritarian regimes have primarily defensive purposes, especially insulation against democracy promotion by the West. As a result, the authors do not foresee a major recession of democracy, as occurred with the rise of fascism during the interwar years. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Democratization.

The chapters in this book deal with different, though related, topics concerning the tense relationship between democracy and diversity. On the one hand, social diversity represents an opportunity, widening the horizon of social options and perspectives of innovation, but, on the other hand, it creates problems for the social cohesion and peaceful coexistence of many groups, be they majority or minority. The chapters depart from the intrinsic connection between democracy and diversity - and the unavoidable challenges that pluralism poses to decision-making procedures - investigating, from different perspectives, how the normative requirement of fully respecting agents' reflexive agency impacts the revision of democratic decision-making procedures and the way in which institutions react to citizens' justice-based claims. All the contributions share the theoretical insight that diversity is one of the raisons d'etre of democracy, and, still, all acknowledge that the fact of pluralism poses challenges to the legitimacy of democratic procedures of decision-making. Indeed, if citizens had the same values and preferences, collective decisions would be easily achieved and the institution of democratic procedures would be redundant. Yet the wide pluralism of doctrines, habits, social standards, and conceptions of the goods typical of contemporary societies has often led citizens to challenge the legitimacy of democratic decisions because these choices do not fit their preferences or values. To address these challenges following recent accounts of democratic decision-making, in this volume, different strategies are introduced, defended, and criticized in order to outline a perspective that is able to guide actual decision-making processes (guidance), define standards that everyone has equal opportunity to fulfil (inclusion), and grant that citizens exercise their reflexive control on the whole democratic system (reflexivity). The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

As racist undercurrents in many western societies become manifestly entrenched, the prevalence of Islamophobia - and the need to understand what perpetuates it - has never been greater. Critiquing the arguments found in notionally left accounts and addressing the limitations of existing responses, What is Islamophobia? demonstrates that Islamophobia is not simply a product of abstract, or discursive, ideological processes, but of concrete social, political and cultural actions undertaken in the pursuit of certain interests. The book centres on what the editors refer to as the 'five pillars of Islamophobia': the institutions and machinery of the state; the far right, incorporating the counterjihad movement; the neoconservative movement; the transnational Zionist movement; and assorted liberal groupings including the pro-war left, and the new atheist movement. The book concludes with reflections on existing strategies for tackling Islamophobia, considering what their distinctive approaches mean for fighting back.

The theoretical goal of the research presented in this book was to include elements of social network analysis into the classical neo-institutional theories of the government coalition formation process. The empirical goal was to verify the benefits and accuracy of this modified analytical model in the analysis of three deviant government coalition formation cases: in Canada (2008), Great Britain (2010) and New Zealand (2017). The authors reconstruct the institutional framework and visualise the networks of connections between main actors. They argue that the transition from a stable configuration of a two-party system to a multi-party system that is extraneous for the political tradition of these democracies has significantly influenced the process of government coalition formation and cabinets appointment.

Studying Muslim fundamentalisms, this book compares key movements, examining their commonalities, differences, and intricate relations, as well as their achievements and failures. Muslim fundamentalisms have the sympathy of approximately half of the Muslim population in the world. Yet, they are divided among themselves and are in a constant state of controversy. The research dwells on the leading fundamentalist movements, such as the Muslim Brothers, Tablighi-Jama'at, al-Qaeda, and ISIS, and illustrates how differently they think about the West and its culture, democracy, and women's presence in the public sphere. By identifying these trends, and studying them comparatively, the book enables the interested reader to make sense of the plethora of fundamentalist movements, which are otherwise lumped together by the media and are barely discernible for the reader. Whereas most studies of Muslim fundamentalism focus on organizational or militant actions that the movements perform, this study concentrates on their efforts to Islamize society through everyday life in a peaceful manner. Identifying the different strands of Muslim fundamentalisms, the book will be a key resource to a wide range of readers including researchers and students interested in politics, religious, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

When the post-war relationship between Spain and America began, Hitler's old ally was an unlikely candidate for US influence. The Cold War changed all this. Soon there were US bases on Spanish territory and a political conjuring trick was under way. This volume examines the public diplomacy strategies that the US government employed to accomplish an almost impossible mission: to keep a warm relationship with a tyrant without drifting apart from his opponents, and to somehow pave the way for a transition to democracy. The book's focus on the perspective of soft power breaks new ground in understanding US-Spanish relations. In so doing, it offers valuable lessons for understanding how public diplomacy has functioned in the past and can function today and tomorrow in transitions to democracy.

Is pluralism inherent to the human condition? Does it have its origins in the diversity of cultures? Are disagreements among individuals the same as disagreements among societies? Focusing on these critical questions essential to the understanding of modern societies, this book traces the origins of pluralism in contemporary political thought and presents new, original interpretations of the idea by contemporary philosophers. The chapters in the volume bring clarity into an ongoing fractious debate and reveal the underlying roots and fissures in our understanding of a dynamic and contested idea. Drawing on the works of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, and other major political philosophers, they delve into the different strands of the concept, their possible real-world political outcomes, and popular misconceptions. A key text, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of politics, political theory and philosophy, and social theory.

Lucy Cane presents the first full-length study of Sheldon Wolin (1922-2015), an influential theorist of democracy and prescient critic of "inverted totalitarianism" in the United States. She traces the development of Wolin's thinking over sixty years, offering an overarching interpretation of his central preoccupations and shifts in perspective. Framed around themes of loss and mourning, this is not only an intellectual biography, but also a critical engagement of Wolin's work with democratic theory more broadly and an assessment of its value for addressing contemporary crises of democracy. Cane brings Wolin into conversation with other contemporary theorists, from Chantal Mouffe to Edward Said, as well as with his direct intellectual influences. She argues that his mournful tendencies continue to offer unique insight into the potential loss of local democratic cultures in an era of neoliberal precarity. At the same time, she questions whether his politics of mourning can adequately grasp the dynamics of democratic coalition-building or the value of new political movements and ideas. Sheldon Wolin and Democracy remedies a lack of interpretive studies of this key thinker, connects divergent strands of contemporary theory, and addresses urgent democratic dilemmas. It is a must read for all political theorists and others in the academy and beyond who seek to conceptualize the fate of democracy amidst the rise of right-wing populist movements in the twenty-first century.

Lucy Cane presents the first full-length study of Sheldon Wolin (1922-2015), an influential theorist of democracy and prescient critic of "inverted totalitarianism" in the United States. She traces the development of Wolin's thinking over sixty years, offering an overarching interpretation of his central preoccupations and shifts in perspective. Framed around themes of loss and mourning, this is not only an intellectual biography, but also a critical engagement of Wolin's work with democratic theory more broadly and an assessment of its value for addressing contemporary crises of democracy. Cane brings Wolin into conversation with other contemporary theorists, from Chantal Mouffe to Edward Said, as well as with his direct intellectual influences. She argues that his mournful tendencies continue to offer unique insight into the potential loss of local democratic cultures in an era of neoliberal precarity. At the same time, she questions whether his politics of mourning can adequately grasp the dynamics of democratic coalition-building or the value of new political movements and ideas. Sheldon Wolin and Democracy remedies a lack of interpretive studies of this key thinker, connects divergent strands of contemporary theory, and addresses urgent democratic dilemmas. It is a must read for all political theorists and others in the academy and beyond who seek to conceptualize the fate of democracy amidst the rise of right-wing populist movements in the twenty-first century.

Jurgen Habermas is one of the foremost philosophers and social theorists in the world today. But the complexity and breadth of his thought make him often difficult to understand. In this book, Stephen White offers a clear, accessible, and reliable introduction to Habermas's work, particularly that which he has written since the publication of Knowledge and human interest (produced in English in 1971). During this period, new themes and directions have emerged in Habermas's thought, which culminated in The Theory of Communicative Action, a massive work that has not hitherto been the subject of extended commentary and analysis. This book is the first to provide a full-length study of Habermas's mature thought. Locating the latter in the context of contemporary debates, White explains Habermas's ideas about action, rationality, communicative ethics, contemporary capitalism, and new social movements, which characterize his later work. He also examines Habermas's interpretation of modernity, showing that although, like his forerunners in the Frankfurt School, Habermas maintains a critical stance towards modernity's instrumentalization of reason, he nonetheless offers a sophisticated defense of the universal significance of other aspects of modern consciousness that are too often forgotten by many recent radical critics of modernity. Throughout, White presents Habermas's work in such a way as to emphasize its coherence, and to demonstrate how it constitutes the beginnings of a distinctive new research program in the social sciences. As a well-researched and lucid account of Habermas's thought, this book will appeal to readers wanting an introduction to the complexity of his ideas, as well as to those already conversant with them. It will also interest social and political theorists concerned with the general theoretical issues that it covers.

While many analysts emphasize Trump's uniqueness, he can also be viewed as a symptom of a deeper systemic crisis. This collection examines the roots, impacts, and future prospects of Trumpism as well as the possibilities for combatting it. Chapters analyze the role of racism and xenophobia, evangelical religion, and elite support in enabling Trump's political ascent, demonstrating how both his demagogic style and his policies draw from the historic repertoire of the Right. The authors also trace the impacts of his presidency on inequality, health, ecological destruction, and U.S. empire. As far-right forces cement their hold on the Republican Party, and as the Democratic Party appears unable to stop them, what lies ahead? The authors argue that confronting Trumpism requires a frontal attack on the conditions that incubated the monster.

The significance of populist parties and their presence in party systems is undeniable. Parties like the Dutch Freedom Party, the French National Front, and the Five Star Movement in Italy rank among the largest political parties in their party systems. Absorbing the Blow examines the effect of populist parties on eleven European party systems. The results are mixed. The book finds that impact often depends on the influence that populist parties have had on mainstream political parties -- those that hitherto dominated party competition. In some instances, populist parties reinforce existing patterns of competition and government formation. Party systems that were bipolar continue to be bipolar. In others change occurs, either because populist parties make it difficult for mainstream parties to form coalitions that were hitherto possible, or because their presence allows mainstream parties to form coalitions that were not previously conceivable. This collection seeks to analyse the way in which mainstream parties absorb the blow of populist party activity, and concludes that populist parties are one of several factors contributing to changes in party systems.

This book tackles questions related to democracy, populism and truth, with results that are sure to inform pressing academic and popular debates. It is common to describe many of today's most energizing politicians and political movements as populist. Some are progressive advocates of greater economic democracy or individual rights, while others are recognizably authoritarian and anti-democratic, even while claiming to defend democracy. What all populist leaders share in common is a rhetorical approach: their ability to articulate, or at least profess to channel, the wishes of 'the people', a group that populist leaders claim a unique ability to understand and govern, especially with regard to their dissatisfaction with ruling elites. They decry corruption (although not necessarily with any sincerity), and they sometimes identify more mainstream politicians and bureaucrats as 'enemies of the people.' The rise of populist politics raises pressing questions about the nature of populism, but also about relationships between populism and democratic institutions. For example, is populism ever a democratic tendency, or does its invocation of a monolithic demos ('the people') signify a fundamentally anti-democratic worldview? Populist political rhetoric also raises concerns about the relationship between truth, democracy, and journalistic integrity. While the history of anti-democratic advocacy (famously illustrated by Plato) has often highlighted the tendency of a democratic style of politics to prioritize popularity over truth, the development of social media-and evolving norms of journalistic communication and public political discourse-raise these misgivings in new forms.

Justice and Development Party (JDP), as the sole incumbent force for the last decade and a half, has proven to be an influential political actor with its power and capability to shape-shift the domestic and foreign policy of the Republic of Turkey. Within this context, this work analyses the transformation of the Turkish society through a constructivist perspective in the context of a "transformational shift" from the "traditional" experienced throughout the JDP tenure. JDP's "new" policy orientation is scrutinized through a constructivist lens to examine the entrenched "clash of identities" between the Islamists and the secularists in Turkish politics.

Theorising Noumenal Power is a critical engagement with Rainer Forst's theory of what he calls "noumenal power." Forst is the most significant younger generation critical theorist of the Frankfurt School, and his critics include several of the most influential contemporary political power theorists. The concept of noumenal power locates the sources of social and political power in the space of reasons or justifications - using a normatively neutral account of "justification." To exercise power, on that account, means to be able to determine, use, close or open up the space of justifications for others. Going back to Kant, the social subject is theorized as a reasoning being who confers legitimacy upon political structures based upon the cognitive faculty of justification. As argued by Max Weber, authority is the foundation of political institutions and authority presupposes a belief in legitimacy. On the one hand such beliefs can be distorted, as in ideology, or they can be based upon a process of reasoned justification relative to normatively desirable principles. Critiquing the former, while building upon the latter, serves as the foundation for theorising just democratic politic institutions. For Forst's critics, a key theme is how to differentiate ideological (bad) justification, typically based upon emotion, from normatively right democratic reasoning. Other important themes are the analysis of structural domination or the use of threats or other means of exercising power. The debate in this volume constitutes an exciting new way of re-thinking the foundations of ideology, political power, democracy and justice. Providing a state-of-the-art discussion concerning the relationship between political power and justification Theorising Noumenal Power is essential for students and scholars interested in the theoretical foundations of political power, democracy and justice. The chapters were originally published in the Journal of Political Power.

Today's unprecedented levels of human migration present urgent challenges to traditional conceptualizations of national identity, nation-state sovereignty, and democratic citizenship. Foreigners are commonly viewed as outsiders whose inclusion within or exclusion from "the people" of the democratic state rests upon whether they benefit or threaten the unity of the nation. Against this instrumentalization of the foreigner, this book traces the historical development of the concepts of sovereignty and foreignness through the thought of philosophers such as Plato, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Derrida, and Benhabib in order to show that foreignness is a structural feature of sovereignty that cannot be purged or assimilated. Understood in this light, foreignness allows for new forms of democratic political unity to be imagined that reject local practices which deprive individuals of political membership solely on the basis of national citizenship. This cosmopolitan model for citizenship provides a novel conceptual framework that simultaneously upholds the legal importance of democratic citizenship for political justice while ceaselessly contesting the exclusionary logic of the nation-state that reserves democratic rights for members of the nation alone.