Sandinistas is about the Nicaraguan revolution and the party that leads it, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). In the early chapters of the book, author Dennis Gilbert tell who the Sandinistas are and what they believe. He probes the inner workings of the FSLN and the party's relations with the organized masses, the military and the revolutionary state. The second half of the book examines the Sandinistas in action, as they deal with peasants, businessmen, Christians, and Yankees. The final chapter covers the history of US-Nicaraguan relations from 1855-1988.
Sandinistas is a balanced, sophisticated, readable account of the most significant revolutionary experience of our day.

Stifling Political Competition examines the history and array of laws, regulations, subsidies and programs that benefit the two major parties and discourage even the possibility of a serious challenge to the Democrat-Republican duopoly. The analysis synthesizes political science, economics and American history to demonstrate how the two-party system is the artificial creation of a network of laws, restrictions and subsidies that favor the Democrats and Republicans and cripple potential challenges. The American Founders, as it has been generally forgotten, distrusted political parties. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution are parties mentioned, much less given legal protection or privilege. This provocative book traces how by the end of the Civil War the Republicans and Democrats had guaranteed their dominance and subsequently influenced a range of policies developed to protect the duopoly. For example, Bennett examines how the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (as amended in 1974 and 1976), which was sold to the public as a nonpartisan act of good government reformism actually reinforced the dominance of the two parties. While focused primarily on the American experience, the book does consider the prevalence of two-party systems around the world (especially in emerging democracies) and the widespread contempt with which they are often viewed. The concluding chapter considers the potential of truly radical reform toward opening the field to vigorous, lively, contentious third-party candidacies that might finally offer alienated voters a choice, not an echo.

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.

The election of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, movement towards socialism) to power in Bolivia in 2006 marked a historic break from centuries of foreign domination and indigenous marginalisation. Evo Morales, leader of the MAS, became the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Kepa Artaraz looks at the attempt to 'refound the nation' which the new government has made as its goal. He shows how the mix of Marxism, indigenous liberation politics, anti-imperialism and environmentalism has made Bolivia one of the most interesting and unique political experiments of Latin America's 'red decade'. As the historic left-turn in Latin America reaches a crossroads, Bolivia: Refounding the Nation guides us through the politics and ideas which have animated this popular movement, drawing out important lessons for progressive politics everywhere.

What is presidential leadership and why have some presidents been considered "great" - or rather "transformational" - while others are not? What are the drivers which distinguish these presidents from the rest? Presidential Leadership in the Americas since Independence answers these questions through a systematic study of leadership across the Americas over 200 years, from independence to the present day. Having surveyed who the most cited presidents are in the Americas, Guy Burton and Ted Goertzel examine the experience of presidents from across the western hemisphere: the US, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. They study the relationship between these men and women's actions within the constraints they faced during four political periods: independence, national consolidation during the nineteenth century, state-building from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries and neoliberalism since the 1970s-80s. The most "transformational" presidents are found to be those who are not only able to innovate and build new political consensuses at a time of crisis, but also consolidate them so that the reforms becoming lasting - and extending beyond an individual president's own political (even biological) lifetime.

By any measure, the story of the Scottish National Party is an extraordinary one.Forced to endure decades of electoral irrelevance since its creation in the 1930s, during which it often found itself grappling with internal debate on strategy, and rebellion from within its own ranks, the SNP virtually swept the board in the 2015 general election, winning all but three of Scotland's fifty-nine seats in Westminster. What's more, under the current leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP has never been a more important force in the landscape of British politics.The leaders who have stood at its helm during this tumultuous eighty-year history - from Sir Alexander MacEwen to Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond - have steered the SNP vessel with varying degrees of success, but there is no doubt that all have contributed to the shape, purpose and ultimate goal of the party of government we see today.The latest addition to the acclaimed British Political Leaders series, Scottish National Party Leaders examines each of these senior figures for the first time, and is essential reading for anyone curious about how this former fringe party evolved into a political phenomenon, changing not only the face of Scottish politics, but British politics as well.

The 2010s were a decade of foodbanks, riots, and the rebirth of political alternatives. Looking to escape a future of rising debt, falling living standards and climate meltdown, a set of movements were born across the globe, led by students, workers and the tent cities of Occupy. A new wave of optimistic, radical young people were building mass movements outside the political bubble, rejecting the neo-liberal consensus and the enrichment of the 1%, and laying the foundations of a new left. Eight years later, Bernie Sanders was favorite to clinch the Democratic Party nomination, and Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum had taken over the Labour Party in Britain, promising 'a new kind of politics'. But as the new left poured into Labour, it was overwhelmed by older, institutional forces on both left and right. Four years after Corbyn became leader, after bitter-infighting and a Brexit-fuelled strategic crisis, it all fell apart. This is the inside story of how the left came back to life in the 2010s, from a man who found himself at the centre of events - featuring unparalleled access and a range of interviews with key left-wing figures. Influential journalist and activist Michael Chessum explains how this movement was built, why it failed, and what it needs to do now.

Political parties run by entrepreneurs as a means to their own end are a recent phenomenon found in many countries, and their electoral influence has never been greater. This book offers a thorough comparative analysis of such 'business-firm' and sometimes oddly memberless parties in Western and East-Central Europe, assessing the considerable corpus of literature on the growing band of political entrepreneurs. The book clearly separates such party enterprises from other, more traditional, political platforms as it contributes to our understanding of the potential of entrepreneurial parties. The authors offer a unique typology based on two characteristics: whether the party receives private financial, media or other investment; and the nature of its membership and territorial structure. Famous examples of entrepreneurial parties, including Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom, alongside their lesser-known counterparts, serve in this book as valuable material for conceptual innovation and the investigation into why certain entrepreneurial party types succeed or fail.

This bold venture into democratic theory offers a new and reinvigorating thesis for how democracy delivers on its promise of public control over public policy. In theory, popular control could be achieved through a process entirely driven by supply-side politics, with omniscient and strategic political parties converging on the median voter's policy preference at every turn. However, this would imply that there would be no distinguishable political parties (or even any reason for parties to exist) and no choice for a public to make. The more realistic view taken here portrays democracy as an ongoing series of give and take between political parties' policy supply and a mass public's policy demand. Political parties organize democratic choices as divergent policy alternatives, none of which is likely to satisfy the public's policy preferences at any one turn. While the one-off, short-run consequence of a single election often results in differences between the policies that parliaments and governments pursue and the preferences their publics hold, the authors construct theoretical arguments, employ computer simulations, and follow up with empirical analysis to show how, why, and under what conditions democratic representation reveals itself over time. Democracy, viewed as a process rather than a single electoral event, can and usually does forge strong and congruent linkages between a public and its government. This original thesis offers a challenge to democratic pessimists who would have everyone believe that neither political parties nor mass publics are up to the tasks that democracy assigns them. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

How challenger parties, acting as political entrepreneurs, are changing European democracies Challenger parties are on the rise in Europe, exemplified by the likes of Podemos in Spain, the National Rally in France, the Alternative for Germany, or the Brexit Party in Great Britain. Like disruptive entrepreneurs, these parties offer new policies and defy the dominance of established party brands. In the face of these challenges and a more volatile electorate, mainstream parties are losing their grip on power. In this book, Catherine De Vries and Sara Hobolt explore why some challenger parties are so successful and what mainstream parties can do to confront these political entrepreneurs. Drawing analogies with how firms compete, De Vries and Hobolt demonstrate that political change is as much about the ability of challenger parties to innovate as it is about the inability of dominant parties to respond. Challenger parties employ two types of innovation to break established party dominance: they mobilize new issues, such as immigration, the environment, and Euroscepticism, and they employ antiestablishment rhetoric to undermine mainstream party appeal. Unencumbered by government experience, challenger parties adapt more quickly to shifting voter tastes and harness voter disenchantment. Delving into strategies of dominance versus innovation, the authors explain why European party systems have remained stable for decades, but also why they are now increasingly under strain. As challenger parties continue to seek to disrupt the existing order, Political Entrepreneurs shows that their ascendency fundamentally alters government stability and democratic politics.

South Africa’s democracy is in trouble. The present situation is, in objective terms, a house divided; a house that is tottering on rotten foundations. Despite the more general advances that have been made under the ANC’s rule since 1994, power has not only remained in the hands of a small minority but has increasingly been exercised in service to capital. The ANC has become the key political vehicle – in party and state form as well as application – of corporate capital: domestic and international, black and white, local and national, and constitutive of a range of different fractions. As a result, ‘transformation’ has largely taken the form of acceptance of, combined with incorporation into, the capitalist ‘house’, now minus its formal apartheid frame.

What has happened in South Africa over the last 22 years is the corporatisation of liberation, the political and economic commodification of the ANC and societal development. Those in positions of leadership and power within the ANC have allowed themselves to be lured by the siren calls of power and money, to be sucked in by the prize of ‘capturing’ institutional sites of power, to be seduced by the egoism and lifestyles of the capitalist elite.

This book tells that ‘story’ by offering a critical, fact-based and actively informed holistic analysis of the ANC in power, as a means to: better explain and understand the ANC and its politics as well as South Africa’s post-1994 trajectory; contribute to renewed discussion and debate about power and democracy; and help identify possible sign-posts to reclaim revolutionary, universalist and humanist values as part of the individual and collective struggle for the systemic change South Africa’s democracy needs.

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.

In this important new book, Stephen Driver and Luke Martell examine how the Blair government is re-shaping Britain, Britain's place in Europe and British social democracy. This timely study of Labour's first term in power for two decades challenges the view that New Labour has thrown in the towel to Thatcherite neo-liberalism. Driver and Martell argue that Tony Blair's government has in fact taken politics and policy-making beyond Thatcherism. But they also cast doubt on some of the social democratic claims of Labour modernizers. While Labour's stunning election victories in 1997 and 2001 have given the Blair government an unprecedented opportunity to shape the political and policy landscape in Labour's image, Blair's Britain continues to bear the imprint of eighteen years of radical Conservative government.

"Blair's Britain" explores the central policy dilemmas faced by the Labour Party in government in its second term and beyond: the balance between social justice and economic efficiency; strong government and pluralist politics; and work and home life. The authors explore how social democrats and progressive politicians across Europe in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, as well as the United States, have responded to the challenges of globalization and social change - and examine the comparative politics of social democracy across Europe and the rest of the world today.

This book is the most comprehensive survey of New Labour yet to appear, and will be read by students of politics and sociology as well as being accessible to the general reader.

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In February 1900 a group of men representing trade unionists, socialists, Fabians and Marxists gathered in London to make another attempt at establishing an organisation capable of getting working-class men elected to Parliament. The body they set up was the Labour Representation Committee; six years later when 29 of its candidates were elected to the House of Commons, it changed its name to the Labour Party. No women took part in that first meeting, but several watched from the public gallery. Amongst them was Isabella Ford, an active socialist and trade unionist who would have been familiar to most of the men assembled below. She had been asked by her friend, Millicent Fawcett, to attend and report back on what happened. A few years later she would become the first woman to speak at a Labour Party conference, moving a resolution on votes for women but, at the Party's inception in 1900, she and every other woman in the hall was silent. Throughout Labour's history, even in its earliest years, women were present in the room, but they were not always recorded or remembered. They came from many different backgrounds and they worked for the causes they believed in as organisers, campaigners, negotiators, polemicists, public speakers and leaders. They took on the vested interests of their time; sometimes they won. Yet the vast majority of them have been forgotten by the Labour movement that they helped to found. Even Margaret Bondfield, who became Britain's first woman cabinet minister, often barely merits a footnote. Women made real and substantial contributions to Labour's earliest years and had a significant impact on the Party's ability to attract and maintain women's votes after World War I. In addition to Margaret and Isabella, in many of the rooms in which the Labour Party found its feet, remarkable women wait to be rediscovered. This book tells their story.

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.

This insider's account of the workings of Umkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, during the underground years, is a modern-day story of intrigue and cunning in the fight against apartheid. The author, Ronnie Kasrils, begins by describing his involvement with the South African Communist Party and the underground resistance within South Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s. Following the arrests of Mandela and other ANC leaders, he fled into hiding overseas, became one of the key commanders of Umkhonto weSizwe and was responsible for setting up training camps in Tanzania, Cuba and elsewhere. Kasrils became notorious as the "Red Pimpernel" as he slipped in and out of South Africa in a plethora of disguises to run secret missions, narrowly escaping arrest and detention in several close shaves with security forces. After the legalising of the ANC and SACP, he returned to Johannesburg to take up a position on the National Executive Committee. The story culminates with the disastrous march on Bisho in the Ciskei homelands in September 1992, when police opened fire on the crowd that Kasrils was leading and a massacre ensued.

This book comprehensively describes the impact of modern technologies on political leadership by providing a new paradigm of the phenomenon of neo-leadership, that is political leadership oriented on creating both the image and political influence on the Internet. It examines its functioning in the new media environment and identifies the most important transforming trends, taking into account their impact on political and social relations in an era of dynamic technological development. Systematically exploring various dimensions of leadership, it presents new notions relevant in a networked world where leaders are created and conduct themselves against the backdrop of a technological revolution, including the development of AI, automation, algorithms and ultrafast networks, all of which strengthen or disrupt their impact and create a new set of virtual authorities exerting an increasing impact on society, ethical considerations and political life and requiring new methods for study. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of leadership and elite studies, media and communication studies, political marketing, political science, international relations; public policy, and sociology.

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.

Three Tropes on Trump: A Textbook on Applied Marxism, Semiotics, and Psychoanalysis uses the term "trope" in an unusual way-not as an expression in a figurative sense but as a form or method of analysis. This book uses Marxist theory, semiotic theory, and psychoanalytic theory in an attempt to understand what we might call the Trump phenomenon and the Trump style. Each chapter features a primer on its methodology, and it applies concepts from these theories to Trump's candidacy and presidency, covering everything from his hair style, his use of spectacle, his use of insults, his comedic aspects, his personality, and his many psychological problems to help make sense of Trump and his relationship to his base and to the American public.

New political parties have regularly appeared in developed democracies around the world. In some countries issues focusing on the environment, immigration, economic decline, and regional concerns have been brought to the forefront by new political parties. In other countries these issues have been addressed by established parties, and new issue-driven parties have failed to form. Most current research is unable to explain why under certain circumstances new issues or neglected old ones lead to the formation of new parties. Based on a novel theoretical framework, this study demonstrates the crucial interplay between established parties and possible newcomers to explain the emergence of new political parties.
Deriving stable hypotheses from a simple theoretical model, the book proceeds to a study of party formation in twenty-two developed democracies. New or neglected issues still appear as a driving force in explaining the emergence of new parties, but their effect is partially mediated by institutional factors, such as access to the ballot, public support for parties, and the electoral system. The hypotheses in part support existing theoretical work, but in part present new insights. The theoretical model also pinpoints problems of research design that are hardly addressed in the comparative literature on new political parties. These insights from the theoretical model lead to empirical tests that improve on those employed in the literature and allow for a much-enhanced understanding of the formation and the success of new parties.
Simon Hug is Lecturer in Political Science, University of Geneva.

This book offers the first comprehensive, comparative and coherent perspective on parliamentary candidates in contemporary representative democracy. Based on the unique database of the 'Comparative Candidate Survey' project which interrogated parliamentary candidates in more than 30 countries, it fills a significant lacuna by focusing on the thousands of ordinary candidates that participate in national elections. It examines who the candidates are in terms of their socio-demographic background and political career patterns, how they were selected by their parties, what their policy preference are and whether these are congruent to those held by their voters, who they seek to represent and how they intend to do so once elected, and what their visions are on representative democracy and party government. Last but not least, it investigates how they go about reaching out to their potential voters during the election campaign. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party politics, political elites, political communication, political participation, elections, theories of democracy and representation, legislative studies, voting behaviour and more broadly to European politics, as well as to political and policy professionals throughout Europe.

This comprehensive collection draws upon and reengages with a long history of Marxian-anchored thought to analyze the potential for social transformation through a reinvigorated radical Left, all within the context of the ascendance of an increasingly ethnonationalist, patriarchal, and authoritarian far Right worldwide. The authors identify and reflect on strategies, tactics, and possibilities for analyzing and intervening in advanced capitalist societies by increasing and deepening popular participation and support on the far Left. The chapters are framed in terms of conceptualizing the capitalist present, organizing "the people" and reimagining the radical Left. Together, in diverse ways that draw upon both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the authors evaluate the difficulties of augmentation across multiple planes, from the tension between migrants and citizen workers, to the uneasy relationship between sovereignty and class, to the contradictions operating across international versus domestic dynamics. How and why (if at all) should the radical Left reexamine its understanding of political consciousness, identity, ideology, and institutions, as they relate to Marxian analysis and various threads of critical theory? The authors suggest new approaches for understanding what the radical Left is up against and how problematic barriers might be torn down, thus disrupting unhelpful binaries such as state versus capital, national versus international, worker versus migrant, activist versus candidate, and freedom versus necessity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Global Discourse.