This book critically examines the role and politics of humour and the performance of power in South Asia. What does humour do and how does it manifest when lived political circumstances experience ruptures or instability? Can humour that emerges in such circumstances be viewed as a specific narrative on the nature of democracy in the region? Drawing upon essays from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, this volume discusses many crucial historical and contemporary themes, including dance-drama performances in northern India; caste and stand-up comedy in India; cartoon narratives of citizens' anxieties; civic participation through social media memes in Sri Lanka; media, politics and humorous public in Bangladesh; the politics of performance in India; and the influence of humour and satire as political commentaries. The volume explores the impact of humour in South Asian folklore, ritual performances, media and journalism, and online technologies. This topical and interdisciplinary book will be essential for scholars and researchers of cultural studies, political science, sociology and social anthropology, media and communication studies, theatre and performance studies, and South Asian studies.

Originally published in 1968, this book deals with the process of public legislation in modern Britain at the time, not in terms of constitutional formulae, but by a realistic appraisal of the relationships between the political institutions and forces which gave the process its shape. It concentrates particularly on the procedures and conventions which operated at the preparatory stages of legislation, and established that legislation was almost exclusively a governmental function, Parliament playing only a minor role. It is particularly concerned to stress the extent to which consultation by the government with pressure groups was now a major feature of the legislative process, and concludes that subordinate departmental legislation, developed as a result of collaboration between pressure groups and Civil Servants, was the most characteristic and important stage of the legislative process in Britain. The book brought together the conclusions of recent scholarship in this field, and the result is a balanced perspective of an important decision-making process of British government at the time. Today it can be read in its historical context.

Authored by the co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project with unique access to the most extensive and authoritative data on all aspects of political advertising, thus offering students, scholars, and practitioners evidence-based research on all aspects of campaign and candidate outreach. Provides the most up-to-date coverage of digital ad content and spending patterns, benefitting business analysis and campaign strategic planning. Covers race and gender issues as well as the psychology of campaign ads, thus speaking to consumers as well as producers of political advertising. New to the Second Edition Covers the spending, content and tone of political advertising in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the 2018 midterms, looking ahead to 2022 and 2024. Addresses the interference of foreign actors in elections and their connection to political advertising. Expands the discussion of digital political advertising and incorporates this topic into every chapter. Adds a new chapter specifically addressing digital ad content and spending. Includes data from the Facebook, Google and Snapchat ad libraries and explores the role of these companies in regulating the sale of political advertising. Incorporates new data on the effects of race and gender in advertising, including what is known about the way in which advertising may activate prejudicial attitudes.

This book examines the content of MPs' activities through which parliamentarians generate representative claims. Challenging the idea that studying individual representation is a futile exercise, this book shows that looking at the opinions and behavioural patterns of parliamentarians can shed light on some important questions: What are the interests represented in parliament? How important are electoral incentives in shaping the role of representatives? What is the impact of parliamentarians' personal characteristics? Focussing on the role played by Italian members of the Chamber of Deputies across a period of more than 20 years, the study applies role analysis to connect the normative debates on political representation to empirical studies and is underpinned by a rich data set of parliamentary activities and surveys on parliamentarians' attitudes and opinions. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of legislative studies, European politics, Italian studies/politics, and more broadly to comparative politics.

The widespread adoption of smartphones has led to an explosion of mobile social media data, more than a billion messages per day that continuously track location, content, and time. Social Media in the Contemporary City focuses on the effects of social media on local communities and urban space in a variety of political and economic settings related to social activism, informal economic activity, public art, and global extremism. The book covers events ranging from Banksy art installations, mobile food trucks, and underground restaurants, to a Black Lives Matter protest, the Christchurch mosque shootings, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. The interplay between urban space, local community, and social media in each case study requires diverse methodologies that are both computational (i.e. machine learning, social network analysis, and natural language processing) and ethnographic (i.e. semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis, and site analysis). The book views social media not as a replacement for the local community or urban space but rather as a translation of the uses and meanings of all three realms. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and instructors in a number of disciplines including urban design/planning, media studies, geography, and communications.

This edited collection contributes to the study of conspiracy culture by analysing the relationship of literary forms to the formation, reception, and transformation of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are narratives, and their narrative form provides the structure within which their 'readers' situate themselves when interpreting the world and its history. At the same time, conspiracist interpretations of the world may then be transmediated into works of literature and import popular discourse into narrative structures. The suppression and disappearance of books themselves may generate conspiracy theories and become co-opted into political dissent. Additionally, literary criticism itself is shown to adopt conspiracist modes of interpretation. By examining conspiracy plots as literary plots, with narrative, rhetorical, and symbolic characteristics, this volume is the first systematic study of how conspiracy culture in American and European history is the consequence of its interactions with literature. This book will be of great interest to researchers of conspiracy theories, literature, and literary criticism.

The widespread adoption of smartphones has led to an explosion of mobile social media data, more than a billion messages per day that continuously track location, content, and time. Social Media in the Contemporary City focuses on the effects of social media on local communities and urban space in a variety of political and economic settings related to social activism, informal economic activity, public art, and global extremism. The book covers events ranging from Banksy art installations, mobile food trucks, and underground restaurants, to a Black Lives Matter protest, the Christchurch mosque shootings, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. The interplay between urban space, local community, and social media in each case study requires diverse methodologies that are both computational (i.e. machine learning, social network analysis, and natural language processing) and ethnographic (i.e. semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis, and site analysis). The book views social media not as a replacement for the local community or urban space but rather as a translation of the uses and meanings of all three realms. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and instructors in a number of disciplines including urban design/planning, media studies, geography, and communications.

Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust-rather than trust-can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Books on gaullism - or, more precisely, books on General de Gaulle - are not uncommon. Originally published in English in 1971, this claimed to be the first book of this sort on gaullism as a political force within the French political system. Since the publication of his work on the Union pour la nouvelle Republique Jean Charlot had become known as one of the few objective experts on gaullism. His knowledge of the British political system had helped him to appreciate the nature of the gaullist party which he saw from the first, not as a transient party linked to the political career of General de Gaulle, but as a major, modern, right-wing party, comparable to the Conservative Party in Britain. In this book he demonstrates how the gaullist movement is a 'voter-oriented' party, the first that France had really ever known. The strength of gaullism lies in the electorate, which had fully accepted gaullist economic policies, the institutional changes introduced under the Republic, and the party's foreign policy. This voter-oriented party had fundamentally changed the French party system. A majority party since 1962, the gaullist movement would force the left to regroup within a left-wing, voter-oriented party, if it did not want to face political sterility. Jean Charlot was one of the few specialists to publish an article just after the referendum (Le Monde, May 2, 1969) forecasting that the departure of General de Gaulle did not foreshadow the end of gaullism as a major political force.

In this book Pragati Rawat and John C. Morris identify and evaluate the impact of factors that can help explain the difference in e-participation, public participation using information and communication technology, in different countries. While cross-sectional studies have been covered, few have taken an in-depth look at cross-national studies. This book attempts to fill the gap using quantitative panel data to explore the influence of technology and institutions, and the impact of their complex relationships in a mediation and moderation analysis, on e-participation. The current study reviews the scholarly work in the field of "offline" and "online participation" to identify a set of antecedents that influence e-participation. A conceptual framework is developed, supported by the theories from the public policy and socio-technical premise. The authors utilize secondary data, primarily from the UN and World Economic Forum, for 143 countries from three waves of surveys to measure the dependent and explanatory variables. The panel data is statistically analyzed and findings reveal the role of technology as a mediator as well as a moderator for institutions' impact on e-participation. The Effects of Technology and Institutions on E-Participation provides a groundbreaking country-level analysis that will appeal to academics and students of e-government and Digital Government, Public Policy, Public Administration, Public Sector Innovation, and Public Participation.

This volume analyses the narration of the social through music and the seismographic function of music to detect social problems and envision alternatives. Beyond state-driven attempts to link musical production to the official narrative of the nation, mass musical movements emerged during the 20th century that provided countercultural and alternative narratives of the prevailing social context. The Americas contain numerous examples of the strong connection between music and politics; Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" envisioned a socialist transformation of the U.S., the Chilean Nueva Cancion created a narrative and affective frame for the recognition of popular culture as a central element of the cultural politics of the Chilean way to socialism, and Reggae emerged as a response to British colonialism, drawing inspiration and guidance from the pan-Africanist visions of Marcus Garvey. Providing a significant contribution to the study of music and politics/social movements from an inter-American perspective, this book will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. and Latin American Cultural Studies, Transnational Studies, History and Political Studies, Area Studies, and Music Studies. For additional information, please see the authors' Sonic Politics webpage: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/sonicpolitics/index.html

Contesting conventional assumptions of the modern nation-state, this book challenges us to rethink the segmentation of the political realm and its underlying economic and social processes. Cognizant of the historical context of systemic change, Lilyblad reconstructs how illicit social order arises from agonistic competition over territory, authority, and institutions. Immersive empirical investigation traces this bottom-up process in local conflict zones, detailing how spontaneous configurations of violence, socioeconomic resources, and legitimacy transcend the divide between public and private. Ultimately, the analytical vantage of global governance assesses the sobering implications for sovereignty to more accurately reflect the world we have, not the one we may want. By showing how these inherently local illicit social orders develop apart from - not below - the state within a global anarchic society, this book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including political scientists, economists, sociologists, geographers, as well as researchers in interdisciplinary fields such as International Development, International Political Economy, and Global Governance.

This book is the first conceptual and comparative empirical work on the relation between corporatism and dictatorships, bringing both fields under a joint conceptual umbrella. It operationalizes the concepts of social and political corporatism, diffusion and critical junctures and their particular application to the study of Fascist-Era dictatorships. The book's carefully constructed balance between theory and case studies offers an important contribution to the study of dictatorships and corporatism. Through the development of specific indicators in 'critical junctures' of regime change and institutionalization, as well as qualitative data based on different sources such as party manifestos, constitutions and constitutional reforms, expert commissions and the legislation that introduces corporatism, this book traces transnational sources of inspiration in different national contexts. By bringing together a number of both established and new voices from across the field, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of fascism, dictatorship and modern European politics.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the state of political institutions, the military establishment and political parties in Pakistan. It provides a nuanced understanding of the practices of disenfranchisement by theocratic governments in the country which has relegated the people to the margins of their society. The volume provides an in-depth account of the political history of Pakistan focusing not only on national politics and foreign policy but also on their congruences with subnational systems of governance, the criminal justice system, bureaucracy, the electoral system and the police. It discusses challenging issues plaguing the country such as the continued dominance of the military, lagging economic development, lack of accountability within political institutions, sectarianism and terrorism. The author dissects and critically examines Pakistan's hegemonic politics and underlines the need for a new social contract based on the principles of inclusiveness and equality. The volume offers fresh perspectives on the multifaceted problems in Pakistan's politics. It will be of great interest to policy practitioners and to academics and students of politics, law and governance, sociology, international relations, comparative politics, Pakistan studies and South Asia studies.

This book uses an interdisciplinary approach to chart how various forms of violence - domestic, military, legal and political - are not separate instances of violence, but rather embedded in structural inequalities brought about by colonialism, occupation and state violence. The book explores both case studies of individuals and of groups to examine experiences of violence within the context of gender and structures of power in modern Indonesian history and Indonesia-related diasporas. It argues that gendered violence is particularly important to consider in this region because of its complex history of armed conflict and authoritarian rule, the diversity of people that have been affected by violence, as well as the complexity of the religious and cultural communities involved. The book focuses in particular on textual narratives of violence, visualisations of violence, commemorations of violence and the politics of care.

This book offers an in-depth investigation of the emergence and spread of social mobilizations that transcend ethnicity in societies violently divided along ethno-national lines. Using Bosnia Herzegovina as a case study, the book explores episodes of mobilization which have superseded ethno-nationalist cleavages. Bosnia Herzegovina emerged from the 1992-95 war brutally impoverished and deeply ethnically divided, representing a critical and strategic case for the examination and understanding of the dynamics of mobilization in such divided societies. Despite difficult circumstances for civic-based collective action, social mobilizations in the country have grown in size, number and intensity in recent years. Marked by citizen demand for accountable governance, responsive urbanism, and access to basic human rights, these protests have been driven by economic, social and political problems which cut across religious and ethnic divides. Examining the variation in spatial and social scale of contention, the book investigates movements' formation, their organizational structures and networking strategies and advances research on divided societies and social movements. This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Southeastern Europe and those examining political dissent, social movements and mobilization in divided societies, as well as practitioners in civil society, grassroots groups and political activists.

Necrogeopolitics: On Death and Death-Making in International Relations brings together a diverse array of critical IR scholars, political theorists, critical security studies researchers, and critical geographers to provide a series of interventions on the topic of death and death-making in global politics. Contrary to most existing scholarship, this volume does not place the emphasis on traditional sources or large-scale configurations of power/force leading to death in IR. Instead, it details, theorizes, and challenges more mundane, perhaps banal, and often ordinary modalities of violence perpetrated against human lives and bodies, and often contributing to horrific instances of death and destruction. Concepts such as "slow death," "soft killing," "superfluous bodies," or "extra/ordinary" destruction/disappearance are brought to the fore by prominent voices in these fields alongside more junior creative thinkers to rethink the politics of life and death in the global polity away from dominant IR or political theory paradigms about power, force, and violence. The volume features chapters that offer thought-provoking reconsiderations of key concepts, theories, and practices about death and death-making along with other chapters that seek to challenge some of these concepts, theories, or practices in settings that include the Palestinian territories, Brazilian cities, displaced population flows from the Middle East, sites of immigration policing in North America, and spaces of welfare politics in Scandinavian states.

Proposing a novel approach to understanding the contemporary political landscape, Akram draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Margaret Archer on agency and argues the need for an in-depth engagement with concepts of agency to improve the reach and scope of political analysis. Is the way that people engage with politics changing? If so, how well-equipped are we to document and explain the extent and range of the ways in which people are engaging in politics today? This book tackles these questions through a blend of theoretical reflection and empirical research, shedding new light on the relationship between arena and process definitions of politics, and how the social relates to the political. Hitherto unexplored features of agency such as the unconscious and the internal political conversation are shown to be critical in exploring how people mobilise today and how they make sense of their political engagement. Two in-depth case studies of the internal political conversations that individuals hold as well as an analysis of the 2011 UK riots are presented. Making a case for the role of self-expression in politics, this book will be of use for graduates and scholars interested in British politics, political theory, social theory, political sociology, the theory and practice of political engagement and political behaviour.

Numerous scholars have noticed that certain political institutions, including federalism, majoritarian electoral systems, and presidentialism, are linked to lower levels of income redistribution. This book offers a political geography explanation for those observed patterns. Each of these institutions is strongly shaped by geography and provides incentives for politicians to target their appeals and government resources to localities. Territorialized institutions also shape citizens' preferences in ways that can undermine the national coalition in favor of redistribution. Moreover, territorial institutions increase the number of veto points in which anti-redistributive actors can constrain reform efforts. These theoretical connections between the politics of place and redistributive outcomes are explored in theory, empirical analysis, and case studies of the USA, Germany, and Argentina.

The 1963 Children's March in Birmingham, Alabama. Tiananmen Square, 1989. The 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. March for Our Lives, and School Strike for Climate. What do all these social justice movements have in common? They were led by passionate, informed, engaged young people. Jamie Margolin has been organizing and protesting since she was fourteen years old. Now the co-leader of a global climate action movement, she knows better than most how powerful a young person can be. You don't have to be able to vote or hold positions of power to change the world. In Youth to Power, Jamie presents the essential guide to changemaking, with advice on writing and pitching op-eds, organizing successful events and peaceful protests, time management as a student activist, utilizing social media and traditional media to spread a message, and sustaining long-term action. She features interviews with prominent young activists including Tokata Iron Eyes of the #NoDAPL movement and Nupol Kiazolu of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, who give guidance on handling backlash, keeping your mental health a priority, and how to avoid getting taken advantage of. Jamie walks readers through every step of what effective, healthy, intersectional activism looks like. Young people have a lot to say. Youth to Power gives you the tools to raise your voice.

This book examines everyday artefacts of world politics: the things that everyday people make that tell stories about how the world works. The author argues that people engage in a unique form of multimodal storytelling about the world, their place in the world, and the world they want to live in through the artefacts that they make. Introducing a novel approach to artefactual analysis, the book explores textiles, jewellery, and pottery, and urges scholars of global politics to take these artefacts seriously. Based on original research, this book is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on concepts and approaches from across the humanities and social sciences, including archaeology, history, sociology, world politics, anthropology, and material studies. It will therefore be of interest to a wide range of readers.

This book takes stock of Belgium's exceptional and - for some foreign observers -schizophrenic position in the political world and explains its idiosyncrasy to a non-Belgian audience. Offering a broad and comprehensive analysis of Belgian politics, the guiding questions throughout each of the chapters of this book are: Is Belgium a political enigma, and why? Along which axes is Belgium "exceptional" compared to other countries? And what insights does a comparative study of Belgian politics have to offer? The book therefore provides a critical assessment of how Belgian politics "stands out" internationally, both in good and bad ways - including consociationalism, federalism, democratic innovations, Euroscepticism, government formation, gender equality, among others - and which factors can explain Belgium's exceptional position. Based on cutting-edge research findings, the book will be of wide interest to scholars and students of Belgian politics, European Politics and Comparative politics. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Authored by the co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project with unique access to the most extensive and authoritative data on all aspects of political advertising, thus offering students, scholars, and practitioners evidence-based research on all aspects of campaign and candidate outreach. Provides the most up-to-date coverage of digital ad content and spending patterns, benefitting business analysis and campaign strategic planning. Covers race and gender issues as well as the psychology of campaign ads, thus speaking to consumers as well as producers of political advertising. New to the Second Edition Covers the spending, content and tone of political advertising in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the 2018 midterms, looking ahead to 2022 and 2024. Addresses the interference of foreign actors in elections and their connection to political advertising. Expands the discussion of digital political advertising and incorporates this topic into every chapter. Adds a new chapter specifically addressing digital ad content and spending. Includes data from the Facebook, Google and Snapchat ad libraries and explores the role of these companies in regulating the sale of political advertising. Incorporates new data on the effects of race and gender in advertising, including what is known about the way in which advertising may activate prejudicial attitudes.

The volume: * Includes a handy overview of contemporary India and its socio-economic policies; * is engaging and lucidly written, will be of great interest to scholars of economics, political science, development studies, South Asian studies, and also the general reader

This book looks at how Chinese companies optimize investment opportunities while implementing the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R or BRI). Specifically, it studies five high-profile infrastructure projects undertaken by Chinese firms. Going in-depth through case-study analysis, this book fills a gap by providing the background stories of these projects. By applying a case study approach to five notable and representative B&R projects, including Hambantota Port, the Port de Djibouti, and China-Belarus Industrial Park, it is found that strategies of Chinese firms to implement the BRI have been designed to achieve property rights security, reduction of transaction costs, and internalization of benefits overflowing from expanded business scope or multiple business lines. With firsthand data from host stakeholders and on-ground project managers, this book is a highly relevant and valuable text for policy makers and researchers hoping to understand the policy impact and implications of B&R investments on targeted countries