Since the Great Financial Crisis swept across the world in 2008, there have been few certainties regarding the trajectory of global capitalism, let alone the politics taking hold in individual states. This has now given way to palpable confusion regarding what sense to make of this world in a political conjuncture marked by Donald Trump's `Make America Great Again' presidency of the United States, on the one hand, and, on the other, Xi Jinping's ambitious agenda in consolidating his position as `core leader' at the top of the Chinese state. * Is a major redrawing of the map of global capitalism underway? * Is an unwinding of globalization in train, or will it continue, but with closure to the mobility of labour? * Is there a legitimacy crisis for neoliberalism even while neoliberal practices continue to form state policy? * Are we witnessing an authoritarian mutation of liberal democracy in the 21st century? * Should the strategic issues today be posed in terms of `socialism versus barbarism redux'?

1989 bore witness to a number of seismic events; The fall of the Berlin Wall, protests at Tiananmen Square, the US invasion of Panama, and many more. These notable moments inspired an array of visual, sonic and literary texts that can tell us much about this watershed moment. This edited collection examines these products of 1989 to explore the sense of transformative immediacy, which defined this memorable year, and show how the events of 1989 set the path for the 21st century. Gathering together scholars across a range of disciplines, Reading the New Global Order examines specific texts to reveal key transnational issues of that year, and to highlight fundamental questions about the nature and significance of 1989 as a global moment. From speeches, manifestos and novellas, to a pop album, this book raises questions about what constitutes a 'text' in the study of history and what they can reveal about their point in time. Taken together, these chapters highlight 1989 as a cultural, intellectual and political landmark of the 20th century through the global events it saw and the texts it produced.

The International Reader: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Current Events and Global Issues provides students with diverse insights into major world regions and an array of complex topics and current events. The book is organized into chapters on each of the six major world regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Oceania. It features an extensive vocabulary, regional maps, and a list of countries in each region. The anthology employs an interdisciplinary approach, encouraging students to question, discuss, and analyze global issues across a range of disciplines and fields of study. Topics addressed include the recent surge of populism in Europe, the effects of climate change in Oceania, Islamist extremism in East Africa, the remittance economy in the Middle East, the economic and migrant crisis in Venezuela, and more. The newly revised first edition features new content on poverty and colonialism in Africa, cuteness as Japan's millennial product, authoritarianism in Egypt, the ongoing legacy of colonialism in Australia, and the confluence of sustainability and social justice issues. The International Reader is an ideal resource for courses in global/international studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, social studies, women's studies, and political science.

The United States Space Force, the sixth branch of the armed forces, will soon play a leading role in American foreign policy and will be necessary to protect its economic, political, and social interests at home and abroad. This book argues that America's newest branch of the armed forces, the United States Space Force, will soon play a key strategic role in American foreign policy, military and economic expansion, and technological innovation. Written by a leading expert on and member of the Space Force, the book offers an introduction to the Space Force, explains the urgent need for it, and walks readers through what exactly the Space Force is and is not. Drawing on dozens of interviews with high-ranking members of the armed forces, the author claims that, in the future, space will be the geopolitical center of world politics, as such countries as the U.S., Russia, and China jockey for control of it. America must therefore set aside partisan politics to make space a top priority, as a failure to do so will leave the U.S. and its citizens in a dangerous and vulnerable position on the world stage. The first comprehensive book on the United States Space Force and its role in national security The first synthesis of space power, national security, and U.S. grand strategy Includes interviews with senior people in the United States Space Force and American national security Outlines a comprehensive plan for ensuring American primacy in space

Mass media sources everyday spread the information about events in the different regions of the world. And, most probably, there is no person, who by different level of interest, does not observe the news. On the information line, there are presented the meetings and negotiations, terrorist acts, conflicts and cooperation, wars, big financial and trade deals. How to understand and analyze all those factors? Which regularities act at the world political arena? In the modern world, internal and external events are interconnected with each other by close ties, which finds how the broadcasts are presented. All this, having been taken together, has the direct attitude to the World Politics. World politics is a new scientific discipline, which has been established only at the second half of the twentieth century, but which gained the rapid distribution in many countries. In the focus of its attention - political processes, which are going on in the modern world, but with the perspectives of their further development. In this regard, the world politics (in comparison for example from history) is oriented on the present and future periods and by this means has the closest ties with the political practice. One more significance of the world politics relates to the fact, that it cannot be understood without the knowledge of the relative fields - history, economics, law, social sciences, and psychology. Considering the above-mentioned realities, this book plays a very important role for the increasing public awareness on different processes within the world politics, which concerns the interests of each citizen of our planet. The target audience and potential users of this book will be representatives of the different target groups - Politicians, Diplomats, Scientists, University Professors, Journalists, NGO activists, employees of the various International Governmental and Intergovernmental Organizations, and Students interested in World Politics, Globalization, Democracy and Human Rights, Economics, Defense and Security, Conflict Resolution, Environment, Migration, and Cybersecurity issues.

Challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism.

BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance.

The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance.

While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.

Why do conflict-generated diasporas mobilize in contentious and non-contentious ways or use mixed strategies? This book develops a theory of socio-spatial positionality and its implications for the individual agency of diaspora entrepreneurs. A novel typology features four types of diaspora entrepreneurs-Broker, Local, Distant, and Reserved-depending on the relative strength of their socio-spatial linkages to host-land, original homeland, and other global locations. A two-level typological theory captures nine causal pathways unravelling how diaspora entrepreneurs operate in transnational social fields and interact with host-land foreign policies, homeland governments, parties, non-state actors, critical events, and limited global influences. Non-contention often occurs when diaspora entrepreneurs act autonomously and when host-state foreign policies converge with their goals. Dual-pronged contention is common under the influence of homeland governments, non-state actors, and political parties. The most contention occurs in response to violent events in the original homeland or adjacent to it fragile states. The book is informed by 300 interviews among the Albanian, Armenian, and Palestinian diasporas connected to de facto states, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Palestine respectively. Interviews were conducted in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Brussels in Belgium, as well as Kosovo and Armenia in the European neighbourhood.

Americans and International Affairs to 1921 offers an interpretation of US diplomatic history that incorporates recent expansions in the field, focusing on the construction and contestation of US sovereignty and borders by both official and private institutions and individuals. Foregrounding relations with Britain and Native Americans, the book emphasizes changes in law and norms; property rights; the scope of government power; finances and revenue; immigration policy; and the racialized and gendered rhetoric of "civilization." The chronologically organized chapters cover the colonial period through the Articles of Confederation; the Constitution and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars; the collapse of the Spanish New World empire and related conflicts over the future of slavery; the Civil War and resulting changes to citizenship and the federal government; the development of a federal immigration bureaucracy and formal empire; and a temporally and geographically capacious approach to World War I. The book can stand alone as a survey of the United States in the world to 1921, but it was designed to be used in US diplomatic history courses in which instructors can combine it with material from their own areas of expertise and/or with student research projects. Each chapter contains notes and a bibliography to support the chapter, as well as an additional bibliography of scholarship on topics beyond the scope of the chapter. The book includes a number of original maps, plus a variety of primary source images and essential documents, as well as a guide to online primary source collections.

The 14th thematic volume of International Development Policy provides perspectives through case studies from the global Souths focusing on the challenges and opportunities of governing migration on the subnational, national, regional and international levels. Bringing together some thirty authors from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book explores existing and new policies and frameworks in terms of their successes and best practices, and looks at them through the lens of additional challenges, such as those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of nationalisms and an increase in xenophobia. The chapters also take the '5 Ps' approach to sustainable development (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships) and assess how migration policies serve sustainable development in a rapidly evolving context. Contributors are Yousra Abourabi, Gabriela Agosto, Belkis Aracena, Andrea Fernandez Benitez, Macarena Chepo, Amanda Coffie, Jonathan Crush, Maria del Consuelo Davila Perez, Delidji Eric Degila, Jenny Lind Elmaco, Rene Leyva Flores, Luisa Feline Freier, Silvia Nunez Garcia, Marcela Pezoa Gonzalez, Binod Khadria, Ariel Gonzalez Levaggi, Wei Li, Meixin Liu, Ling Ma, Ratnam Mishra, Daniel Naujoks, Claudia Padilla, Karol Rojas, Fabiana Rubinstein, Yining Tan, Narender Thakur, Gerasimos Tsourapas, Valeria Marina Valle and Jossette Iribarne Wiff.

In Power and Regionalism in Latin America: The Politics of MERCOSUR, Laura Gomez-Mera examines the erratic patterns of regional economic cooperation in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), a political-economic agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, recently, Venezuela that comprises the world's fourth-largest regional trade bloc. Despite a promising start in the early 1990s, MERCOSUR has had a tumultuous and conflict-ridden history. Yet it has survived, expanding in membership and institutional scope. What explains its survival, given a seemingly contradictory mix of conflict and cooperation? Through detailed empirical analyses of several key trade disputes between the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil, Gomez-Mera proposes an explanation that emphasizes the tension between and interplay of two sets of factors: power asymmetries within and beyond the region, and domestic-level politics. Member states share a common interest in preserving MERCOSUR as a vehicle for increasing the region's leverage in external negotiations. Gomez-Mera argues that while external vulnerability and overlapping power asymmetries have provided strong and consistent incentives for regional cooperation in the Southern Cone, the impact of these systemic forces on regional outcomes also has been crucially mediated by domestic political dynamics in the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the unequal distribution of power within the bloc has had a positive effect on the sustainability of cooperation. Despite Brazil's reluctance to adopt a more active leadership role in the process of integration, its offensive strategic interests in the region have contributed to the durability of institutionalized collaboration. However, as Gomez-Mera demonstrates, the tension between Brazil's global and regional power aspirations has also added significantly to the bloc's ineffectiveness.

This book examines the coexistence of crony capitalism and traditionally democratic institutions such as political competition and elections in Russia after the collapse of communism. The combination, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova argues, has produced a distinct pattern of political evolution in contemporary Russia. Elections are meant to ensure government accountability and allow voters to elect a government responsive to their needs, but in postcommunist Russia the institutional forms of democracy did not result in the expected outcomes. Instead, democratic institutions in the context of crony capitalism-in which informal elite groups dominate policy making, and preferential treatment from the state, not market forces, is crucial to amassing and holding wealth-were widely devalued and discredited. As Sharafutdinova demonstrates, especially through her close scrutiny of elections in two regions of Russia, Nizhnii Novgorod and the Republic of Tatarstan, crony capitalism made elections especially intense struggles among the elites. Massive amounts of money flowed into campaigns to promote candidates by discrediting their rivals, money purchased candidates and power, and elites thereby solidified their control. As a result, the majority of citizens perceived elections as the means for the elite to access power and wealth rather than as expressions of public will. Through her detailed case studies and her analyses of contemporary Russia in general, Sharafutdinova argues persuasively that the turn toward authoritarianism associated with Vladimir Putin and supported by a majority of Russian citizens was a negative political response to the interaction of electoral processes and crony capitalism.

Understanding and Combating Global Corruption: A Reader provides students and anti-corruption thinkers and activists with a collection of essays by accomplished scholars and thinkers from around the world. The essays challenge readers to think through issues associated with global corruption, in both commerce and government, with reference to particular forms of corruption such as bribery and fraud, as well as to systemic or systematic abuses of power or authority. In the opening reading, students learn that the term "corruption" has a broad definition that is not limited to quid pro quo transactions, but can also involve betrayals of trust and failures to render honest services on behalf of stakeholders. Additional readings examine the various forms of corruption that have developed within the United States throughout the country's history, and how that corruption was mitigated or ablated by government officials acting in the public interest. Students explore cases of corruption from other countries, including Brazil and Nigeria. The text closes with a philosophical argument that a "whole-of-society approach" could help countries move toward eradicating corruption. Featuring enlightening and thought-provoking readings, Understanding and Combating Global Corruption is an ideal resource for courses in business and professional ethics.

As the EU's relations with Russia remain at an all-time low and continue to be in a state of paralysis, marked by de-institutionalisation, inertia and estrangement, the EU's policy towards Russia seems up for review. By taking stock of the implementation of the EU's Global Strategy and the five principles that are guiding EU-Russia relations, this volume provides a forward-looking angle and contributes to a better understanding of the current EU-Russia relationship and the prospects for overcoming the existing deadlock. By bringing together European and Russian scholars and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines insights from EU studies, international relations, and European and international law, the book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the state of affairs in EU-Russia relations.

European Perceptions of China and Perspectives on the Belt and Road Initiative is a collection of fourteen essays on the way China is perceived in Europe today. These perceptions - and they are multiple - are particularly important to the People's Republic of China as the country grapples with its increasingly prominent role on the international stage, and equally important to Europe as it attempts to come to terms with the technological, social and economic advances of the Belt and Road Initiative. The authors are, on the whole, senior academics specializing in such topics as International Relations and Security, Public Diplomacy, Media and Cultural Studies, and Philosophy and Religion from more than a dozen different European countries and are involved in various international projects focussed on Europe-China relations.

Founded in 1929, the Jewish Agency played a central role in the founding of the State of Israel. Throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, many secret meetings took place between the JA and Arab leaders and elites. The dominant narrative claims that Syrian leaders and elites were not involved in any such meetings. However, this book reveals for the first time that a multitude of secret meetings and negotiations took place including with the Syrian National Block - the official Syrian leadership at the time - and the Shahbandari opposition and leaders of Jabal al-Druze. Based mainly on primary sources from Israeli archives, including documentation of discussions, reports and decisions taken by the JA leadership, the book tells a new story of a critical period of history, the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 in Palestine. Mahmoud Muhareb argues that the main historic objective of the JA was to reach agreements with Arab leaders and Arab states, behind the back of the Palestinians and at their expense, and to normalize its relations with the Arab states while it continued to deny the national rights of the Palestinians. The book challenges Israeli and Syrian official narratives and substantiates the Palestinian narrative, as well as some Israeli new historians who asserted Israel refusal to recognize the national rights of the Palestinians and affirmed its attempts to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Arab states at the expense of the Palestinians. The book includes Arabic and Hebrew sources translated into English for readers.

Cell phone apps share location information; software companies store user data in the cloud; biometric scanners read fingerprints; employees of some businesses have microchips implanted in their hands. In each of these instances we trade a share of privacy or an aspect of identity for greater convenience or improved security. What Robert M. Pallitto asks in Bargaining with the Machine is whether we are truly making such bargains freely - whether, in fact, such a transaction can be conducted freely or advisedly in our ever more technologically sophisticated world. Pallitto uses the social theory of bargaining to look at the daily compromises we make with technology. Specifically, he explores whether resisting these 'bargains' is still possible when the technologies in question are backed by persuasive, even coercive, corporate and state power. Who, he asks, is proposing the bargain? What is the balance of bargaining power? What is surrendered and what is gained? And are the perceived and the actual gains and losses the same - that is, what is hidden? At the center of Pallitto's work is the paradox of bargaining in a world of limited agency. Assurances that we are in control are abundant whether we are consumers, voters, or party to the social contract. But when purchasing goods from a technological behemoth like Amazon, or when choosing a candidate whose image is crafted and shaped by campaign strategists and media outlets, how truly free, let alone informed, are our choices? The tension between claims of agency and awareness of its limits is the site where we experience our social lives - and nowhere is this tension more pronounced than in the surveillance society. This book offers a cogent analysis of how that complex, contested, and even paradoxical experience arises as well as an unusually clear and troubling view of the consequential compromises we may be making.