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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political parties > General
This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades. The book demonstrates how foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this perspective, Amnon Aran highlights the contributions of the central individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy decisions, implementation, and outcomes. Aran demonstrates that Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances since the end of the Cold War - entrenchment, engagement and unilateralism - and explains why.
Liz Truss's journey from schoolgirl revolutionary to Britain's shortest-serving Prime Minister The Sunday Times Politics Book of the Year 'An insightful and at times riotously entertaining account of the lengthy rise and abrupt fall of Britain's 56th Prime Minister. What was intended as a prologue to her premiership is now a riveting political obituary in which every page drips with the seeds of both triumph and disaster. Cole and Heale have produced a meticulously reported account of Truss's drive, impulsiveness, eccentricity and ideological certainty which reads like a warning from history. It has elements of tragedy but is frequently very, very funny.' Tim Shipman 'Make sure you put your seat belt on. Heale and Cole put you in the passenger seat of the fastest car crash in recent political history. It's an unmissable romp through Liz Truss's long journey to the top, fuelled by ambition and espresso. The clues that foretold the extraordinary catastrophe are all there, as the authors reveal in gory detail how Liz Truss nearly had the last laugh, before finally, as her government imploded, the joke was on her.' Laura Kuenssberg Despite being written off and mocked by even her closest colleagues, Liz Truss slowly but determinedly achieved her goal of taking over 10 Downing Street - only to instantly plunge her administration into chaos and announce her resignation after a record-breaking 44 days. How did she do it? And what exactly went so wrong? With unrivalled access and insight, award-winning political journalists Harry Cole and James Heale provide the answers, drawing on interviews with Truss's friends and supporters, as well as her worst critics and rivals, from Kwasi Kwarteng to Michael Gove. Tracking Truss's transformation from geeky teenage Lib Dem to Tory PM, with the inside scoop on her first - and only - month in office, Out of the Blue is the unmissable behind-the-scenes account of Britain's shortest-serving Prime Minister.
This Element examines how the changing economic basis of parliamentary elections in nineteenth century England and Wales contributed to the development of modern parties and elections. Even after the 1832 Reform Act expanded the British electorate, elections in many constituencies went uncontested, party labels were nominal, and candidates spent large sums treating and bribing voters. By the end of the century, however, almost every constituency was contested, candidates stood as representatives of national parties, and campaigns were fought on the basis of policies. We show how industrialization, the spread of literacy, and the rise of cheap newspapers, encouraged candidates to enter and contest constituencies. The increased expense that came from fighting frequent elections in larger constituencies induced co-partisan candidates to form slates. This imparted a uniform partisan character to parliamentary elections that facilitated the emergence of programmatic political parties.
Conventional wisdom suggests that partisanship has little impact on voter behavior in Brazil; what matters most is pork-barreling, incumbent performance, and candidates' charisma. This book shows that soon after redemocratization in the 1980s, over half of Brazilian voters expressed either a strong affinity or antipathy for or against a particular political party. In particular, that the contours of positive and negative partisanship in Brazil have mainly been shaped by how people feel about one party - the Workers' Party (PT). Voter behavior in Brazil has largely been structured around sentiment for or against this one party, and not any of Brazil's many others. The authors show how the PT managed to successfully cultivate widespread partisanship in a difficult environment, and also explain the emergence of anti-PT attitudes. They then reveal how positive and negative partisanship shape voters' attitudes about politics and policy, and how they shape their choices in the ballot booth.
The Arab Uprisings of 2010 and 2011 had a profound effect on labor politics in the region, with trade unions mobilizing to an extent never before seen. How did these formerly quiescent trade unions become militant? What linkages did they make to other social forces during and after the revolutions? And why did Tunisian unions emerge cohesive and influential while Egyptian unions were fractured and lacked influence? Following extensive interviews, Ian M. Hartshorn answers these questions and assesses how unions forged alliances, claimed independence, and cooperated with international groups. Looking at institutions both domestically and internationally, he traces the corporatist collapse and the role of global labor in offering training and new possibilities for disgruntled workers. With special attention to the relationship with rising Islamist powers, he also examines the ways in which political parties tried to use labor, and vice versa, and provides a detailed study of the role of labor in ousting the first Islamist governments.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Egypt experienced swift economic growth resulting from a regional oil boom. Oddly, this economic growth hardly registered in Egyptian public discourse, which continuously claimed that the country was experiencing multiple economic, social, and cultural crises. This book sets out to investigate this discrepancy and to offer a revisionist history of the period. It documents the massive socio-economic mobility in Egypt by analysing relevant statistical data and ethnographic evidence, indicating the changes in the employment structure and the spread of mass consumption. Relli Shechter further examines a wide array of cultural resources, such as Egyptian academic writing, the press, the cinema, and the literature, in which critics lamented 'what went wrong' in Egypt. By doing so, he offers a local version of a wider Middle Eastern and international story: the global formation of middle-class societies whose members strove for respectable lives with only partial success.
Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, originally published in 1902, represented the first serious attempt to analyze the consequences of democratic suffrage by a comparative analysis of political systems. As such, Ostrogorski's two-volume study of the party system in Britain and the United States exerted profound influence on the subsequent writings of Max Weber and Robert Michels. A descriptive analyst of the party system in these two countries, Ostrogorski developed concepts and methods that an-ticipated by nearly half a century those later used by American and British political scientists. The core of Ostrogorski's analysis is a detailed history of the rise of and changes within the party system in Britain and the United States, the first nations to introduce mass suffrage. While the emphasis of Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties is on the similar trends in the political parties of both countries, Ostrogorski also showed concern with the sources of differences between them. Seeking to explain these variations, he suggested a number of fundamental hypotheses about these two societies that con-tinue to be of relevance today. Lipset's substantial introduction places Os-trogorski's work within its historical context and assesses Ostrogorski's im-pact and influence on both his contemporaries and on later political scien-tists.
Can trauma be inherited? It is this question that sets Alex Halberstadt off on a quest to name and acknowledge a legacy of family trauma, and to end a cycle of estrangement that had endured for nearly a century. His search takes him across the troubled, enigmatic land of his birth. In Ukraine he tracks down his paternal grandfather - most likely the last living bodyguard of Joseph Stalin - to reckon with the ways in which decades of Soviet totalitarianism shaped and fractured three generations of his family. He returns to Lithuania, his Jewish mother's home, to revisit the legacy of the Holocaust and the pernicious anti-Semitism that remains largely unaccounted for, learning that the boundary between history and biography is often fragile and indistinct. And he visits his birthplace, Moscow, where his glamorous grandmother designed homespun couture for Soviet ministers' wives, his mother dosed dissidents at a psychiatric hospital, and his father made a living by selling black-market jazz and rock records. Finally, Halberstadt explores his own story: that of a fatherless immigrant who arrived in America, to a housing project in Queens, New York, as a ten-year-old boy struggling with identity, feelings of rootlessness and a yearning for home. He comes to learn that he was merely the latest in a lineage of sons who grew up alone, separated from their fathers by the tides of politics and history. As Halberstadt revisits the sites of his family's formative traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational transmission of fear, suspicion, melancholy, and rage. And he comes to realize something more: nations, like people, possess formative traumas that penetrate into the most private recesses of their citizens' lives.
Samora Machel (1933–1986) led his people through a war against their Portuguese colonizers and in 1975, became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. His military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain.
Tripura in India's Northeast remains the only region in the world which has sustained a strong left radical political tradition for more than a century, in a context not usually congenial for left politics. Tripura is one of the 29 States in India which has returned the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Front repeatedly to power. By contrast, radical ethnic politics dot the political scenario in the rest of the region. This book examines the roots, nature, governmental performance, and theoretical and policy implications of left radicalism in Tripura. The case of Tripura is placed in comparison with her neighbours in the region, and in some cases with India's advanced States in governance matters. Based on original archival and the very recent empirical and documentary sources on the subject, the author shows that the Left in Tripura is well-entrenched, and that it has sustained itself compared to other parts of India, despite deeply rooted ethnic tensions between the aboriginal peoples (tribes) and immigrant Bengalis. The book explains how the Left sustains itself in the social and economic contexts of persistent ethnic conflicts, which are, rarely, if ever, punctuated by incipient class conflicts in a predominantly rural society in Tripura. It argues that shorn of the Indian Marxism's 'theoretical' shibboleths, the Left in Tripura, which is part of the Indian Left, has learned to accommodate non-class tribal ethnicity within their own discourse and practices of government. This study demolishes the so-called 'durable disorder' hypothesis in the existing knowledge on India's Northeast. A useful contribution to the study of radical left politics in India in general and state politics in particular, this book will be of interest to researchers of modern Indian history, India's Northeast, and South Asian Politics.
This innovative pan-European history of post-war socialism challenges the East-West paradigm that still dominates accounts of post-war Europe. Jan De Graaf offers a comparative study of the ways in which the French, Italian and Polish socialist parties and the Czechoslovakian Social Democratic Party dealt with the problems of socio-economic and political reconstruction. Drawing on archival documents in seven languages, De Graaf reveals the profound divide which existed in all four countries between socialist elites and their grassroots as workers reacted hostilely to calls for industrial discipline and for further sacrifices towards the reconstruction effort. He also provides a fresh interpretation of the political weaknesses of socialist parties in post-war continental Europe by stressing the importance of political history and social structure. By placing the attitudes of the continental socialist parties in their proper socio-historical context he highlights the many similarities across and divergences within the two putative blocs.
Turkish politics were remarkably reshaped in the early 2000s following the decline of the Islamist National View and the electoral breakthrough of the new Justice and Development Party (JDP) headed by Erdogan. Beside its Islamist credentials, Erdogan's JDP consistently and convincingly presented itself as the 'populist' defender of the downtrodden sectors of Turkish society. However, with Erdogan's rise as the popularly elected president in 2014, Turkey's already fragile democratic system was driven in a more authoritarian direction. Shifting the focus away from structural factors, this book analyzes the political appeal and organisation of the JDP that granted them such unprecedented electoral resilience. With critical but accessible theoretical discussions, Toygar Sinan Baykan locates the JDP within the wider literature of populism, Islamist party politics, party organisations and authoritarianism. Over fifty in-depth interviews also help to relate the intimate story of Turkey's socio-cultural divides and the JDP's intraparty organisational dynamics, thereby offering a fresh account of Turkish politics.
In Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865ā1968, Heersink and Jenkins examine how National Convention politics allowed the South to remain important to the Republican Party after Reconstruction, and trace how Republican organizations in the South changed from biracial coalitions to mostly all-white ones over time. Little research exists on the GOP in the South after Reconstruction and before the 1960s. Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865ā1968 helps fill this knowledge gap. Using data on the race of Republican convention delegates from 1868 to 1952, the authors explore how the 'whitening' of the Republican Party affected its vote totals in the South. Once states passed laws to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era, the Republican Party in the South performed better electorally the whiter it became. These results are important for understanding how the GOP emerged as a competitive, and ultimately dominant, electoral party in the late-twentieth century South.
This book considers not the beginning or origins of terrorism but how groups that use terrorism end. Terrorism as a tactic is unlikely to disappear, however virtually all the groups that employed terrorist violence during the 1960s and 1970s have passed from the scene in one way or another. Likewise most of the individuals who embarked on 'careers' in terrorism over these same years now engage in other pursuits. The author argues that al-Qaeda and the various violent Islamist groups it has inspired are, like their predecessors, bound to bring their operations to an end. Rather than discussing the defection or de-radicalization of individuals the book aims to analyze how terrorist groups are defeated, or defeat themselves. It examines the historical record, drawing on a large collection of empirical data to analyze in detail the various ends of these violent organizations. This book provides a unique empirically informed perspective on the end of terrorism that is a valuable addition to the currently available literature and will be of interest to scholars of terrorism, security studies and international politics.
To celebrate Singapore's fiftieth anniversary for its independence from Malaysia in 2015, 35 students, academics and activists came together to discuss and write about pioneering Singaporean human rights activists and their under-reported stories in Singapore. The city-state is known for its remarkable economic success while having strict laws on individual freedom in the name of national security, public order and racial harmony. Singapore's tough stance on human rights, however, does not negate the long and persistent existence of a human rights society that is little known to the world until today. This volume, composed of nine distinctive chapters, records a history of human rights activists, their campaigns, main contentions with the government, survival strategies and other untold stories in Singapore's first 50 years of state-building.
This book is from Chinese academy, which studies the most delicate subject of politics -party theory-; rarely studied as part of the academy. Marxist parties pursuing power for a new society have a long history since 1847 and have encountered many changes since then. Today, the societal and political conditions in some regions have radically changed presenting new challenges for Marxist parties. Inner-party or extra-party coalitions with progressive left-wing forces are full in debate and this imposes them new trials. And, as the argument on the disintegration of proletariat spreads wider Marx's emphasis: "education of the educators" again poses an urgency and adds to the topicality of Marxist party building theories. After radical changes in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it has been proved true that the Marxist party is a key link in building the desired socialist society-the emancipation of the proletariat and humans transcending capitalist society-. Often, many defects of post-capitalist societies were attributed to ruling Marxist parties, their rigid structures, bureaucratization, over-centralization and false interpretation of Marx's relevant ideas, after him . Grave policy mistakes or loss of belief were also considered as part of structural degeneration and distorted class links. This book offers a realistic approach to the problems in the history of Marxist parties; the historical development of ideas on Marxist party. The book was written by scholars from Renmin University-China, debating problems with their societal and historical environment; suggesting courageous trials, innovations, institutionalization, transparency, inner-party democracy, empowerment of members and supervision from outside the Marxist party. And the book is unique as it studies the concept of the ruling Marxist party more comprehensively, and delves into the less debated parts of the party building theory: party's work style and ideological line concepts.
In 2012 Narendra Modi became the first Hindu nationalist politician thrice elected to lead a state of the Indian Union, his stewardship as Chief Minister of Gujarat being the longest in that stateās history. Modi and his BJP supporters explained his achievement by pointing to economic growth under his leadership, yet detractors point out that Modi has been more business-friendly than market-friendlyāto the benefit of large industrial corporations, and at the cost of great social polarisation. In 2002, an anti-Muslim pogrom of unparalleled ferocity occurred in Gujarat, leading to the biggest number of Muslim deaths since Partition. The stateās Hindu majority immediately rallied around Modi. No serious riot has occurred in Gujarat since, but polarisation was key to Modiās strategy there, and he has deployed that strategy again and again since he became Prime Minister of India in 2014. For Modi has cultivated a communal image. A marketing genius, his messaging combines the politics of Hindutva with economic modernisation, to the clear appreciation of Gujaratās middle class. Christophe Jaffrelotās revealing book shows how Modiās Gujarat served as the laboratory of Modiās India, not only in terms of Hindu majoritarianism and national populism, but also of caste and class politics.
Radical Road MapsĀ uncovers the many connections of Far-Left groups and explores their ranges of influence. Employing analytical techniques and diagrams that seek to clarify the web of connections to expose the movement's radical core, military intelligence expert James Hansen helps pave the way for a counteroffensive against the anti-American con job the Far-Left has managed to pull off in recent decades.
Focusing on the rising support for the populist right in Eastern Europe, this book examines how anger and resentment towards minorities is being utilized in politics. Bustikova details the process by which the acquisition of political power and demand for rights by ascendant minority groups precipitates a backlash of mobilization from the radical right. However, this book also argues that prejudice against minorities is not a sentiment exclusive to right-wing voters and is not the root cause of increasing support for the radical right. Rather, this study reveals variation in how minorities are accommodated by the government and explains the electoral successes and failures of radical right parties. By examining the capitalization on these feelings of discontent towards politically assertive minorities and with the governmental policies that yield to their demands, Bustikova exposes volatile, zeitgeist-dependent conditions under which once fringe right-wing parties have risen to prominent but precarious positions of power.
Conventional wisdom emerging from China and other autocracies claims that single-party legislatures and elections are mutually beneficial for citizens and autocrats. This line of thought reasons that these institutions can serve multiple functions, like constraining political leaders or providing information about citizens. In United Front, Paul Schuler challenges these views through his examination of the past and present functioning of the Vietnam National Assembly (VNA), arguing that the legislature's primary role is to signal strength to the public. When active, the critical behavior from delegates in the legislature represents cross fire within the regime rather than genuine citizen feedback. In making these arguments, Schuler counters a growing scholarly trend to see democratic institutions within single-party settings like China and Vietnam as useful for citizens or regime performance. His argument also suggests that there are limits to generating genuinely "consultative authoritarianism" through quasi-democratic institutions. Applying a diverse range of cutting-edge social science methods on a wealth of original data such as legislative speeches, election returns, and surveys, Schuler shows that even in a seemingly vociferous legislature like the VNA, the ultimate purpose of the institution is not to reflect the views of citizens, but rather to signal the regime's preferences while taking down rivals.
Hamas won an overwhelming electoral victory in January 2006, overturning many assumptions regionally and globally. Branded as terrorist by Israel and the West, it is the largest Palestinian militant Islamist organization, formed fifteen years ago at the beginning of the first intifada. Its short-term objective is to drive Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza, an aim it hopes to realize through attacks on Israeli troops and settlers in the Occupied Territories and - more controversially - civilians. It also has the long-term aim of establishing an Islamic state on all of historic Palestine. In the post-Oslo world, Hamas gained power and influence as Israel steadily destroyed the power structure of the avowedly secular Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority. A grass-roots organization that commands wide respect among Palestinians for its incorruptibility, Hamas is divided into two main sections, one responsible for establishing schools, hospitals and religious institutions, the other for military action and terror attacks carried out by its armed underground wing the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. This book charts the origins of Hamas among the Muslim Brotherhood, details the influence of its exiled leadership in Syria and elsewhere, and sets out its internal structure and political objectives. This new edition includes an additional chapter covering events since the book's original publication in November 2006.
In the political landscape of the late nineteenth century, the Populist party was recognized even by its critics as being ahead of its time. Its members saw themselves as bearers of a reform message vital to the nation, reflecting agrarian America's anxiety that the country was moving toward a new form of slavery in the face of changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. These issues were for many Americans the "Crisis of the Nineties," and Populists met that crisis with a stand against imperialism, a commitment to human rights, and a deep distrust of big business. While most studies of Populism have focused on regional activities or on its intellectual and social underpinnings, little has been written about the record of this radical party in the national legislature. Now one of our foremost scholars of Populism presents the first comprehensive treatment of the party in Congress, revealing the programs and personalities that shaped and ultimately doomed the movement. Gene Clanton has combed the Congressional Record to document how these visionaries performed on the national stage during that tumultuous decade. He examines the contributions of the fifty Populist legislators elected by sixteen states and one territory from 1891 to 1903-from Senator William Peffer of Kansas to Congressman William Neville of Nebraska-to show how they represented the party line on such issues as the gold standard, taxation, immigration, government railways, and the Spanish-American War. Clanton demonstrates that congressional Populism was a positive and humane force in American politics totally distinct from the reactionary political movement that flourishes today under its name. He also suggests that the issues which Populist congressmen grappled with and the policies they advocated have continued to affect us even into the present. Long awaited by scholars of the Populist movement, Clanton's book is the crowning achievement of a career of research and shows how these forgotten radicals fit into the sweeping panorama of American politics.
This comprehensive study of party competition in Europe since 2008 aids understanding of the recent, often dramatic, changes taking place in European politics. It addresses how the multiple crises that Europe faces have affected the intensity and structure of party competition, and whether we are seeing a wave of 'critical elections' which will reshape European politics for years to come. The geographical scope of the book covers fifteen European countries, including cases from North-Western Europe (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland), Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain), and Central-Eastern Europe (Hungary, Latvia, Poland, and Romania). Using original data from a large-scale content analysis of mass media, and the debates among parties in election campaigns, this book provides clear graphical presentations of the results, appealing to a wide readership of students, scholars, journalists, practitioners, and the politically interested public. |
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